Thinking about the Future, Responding in the Present: Perceived Social Mobility and Agency during COVID-19

• In Event: Aging and the Life Course Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): 2: Life course Approaches to Mental Health and Well-being

Abstract

“Unsettled times” – periods of upheaval and unpredictability – can provide a window into people’s perceptions of their life trajectories and the strategies they deploy to influence those trajectories (Hamilton and Armstrong 2021; Swidler 1986). For young people in particular, the advent of COVID-19 further complicated a period already marked by significant uncertainty and change: the transition to adulthood (Goldstein et al. 2025; Jackson and Williams 2022). In this paper, we analyze quantitative and qualitative data from the American Voices Project to examine the outlooks of young adults ages 18-24 as they navigated the pandemic. Specifically, we ask: What happens when expected transitions cannot occur or are disrupted? How does this influence young adults’ actions in the present and ideas about what the future holds?

We find that despite the disruption of the pandemic, young adults, irrespective of social class background, were relatively optimistic about the future and their own chances for social mobility. Yet in highlighting the specific actions and strategies participants did (or did not) engage in, our findings underscore the importance of human agency. We demonstrate that actions and strategies can vary considerably across young adults even when they collectively display a general sense of optimism. To explore these themes, we draw upon the concepts of biographical structuration, which acknowledges the constraints of one’s past on the present and future (Schafer et al. 2011), and strategic repositioning, whereby individuals shift their goals to align more closely with their resources (Axxe et al. 2025). In doing so, we examine how childhood conditions may link to both strategic choices made during COVID-19 as well as attitudes about the future.

Authors

• Shelley McDonough Kimelberg, University at Buffalo

• Megan Holland Iantosca, University at Buffalo SUNY

• Kristen Schultz Lee, University at Buffalo