The Informal Choices of Italian Young People: between increase and erosion of family cultural capital

This essay deals with leisure and non-schooling time, meant as informal educational opportunities for Italian young adolescents, more specifically with respect to identification and individuation processes which are at the base of it. Moreover, it is argued that leisure time, meant as time for the self might act as enhancing and increasing factor of cultural family capital, while under different conditions, on the contrary, it becomes a process of choice that spoils rather than it erodes the patrimony of ascribed cultural family resources, as similarly happens to formal educational choices. The paper aims to focus on the value attributed to leisure non schooling time by exploring to what extent and from what kind of contextual factors – in continuity or discontinuity with the meaning value attributed to school time – it might increase/erode/spoil the initial cultural patrimony. Such objective will move from the results of a recent national investigation “Life Chances and significant adults in the educational and professional choices of adolescents”.