Dealing with the Standard Model of (Male) Adulthood: an Ethnography of Marginalised Young Masculinities and Transitions to Adulthood

The article draws on a five-year ethnography conducted on a sample of Italian young male individuals (18-27) participating in the activities of a community of ultras fan to explore how young men sharing disadvantaged social origins and living conditions make sense of their difficulties in reaching the normative ideal set by the “standard model of adulthood” (Lee, 2001). Focusing on homosocial relationships in everyday and private settings, the contribution discusses young men’s elaboration of an alternative model of adult recognition based on masculinity. Analysing the marginalised performance of masculinity (Connell, 1995) that emerges from young men’s attempt to keep together what an adult should be (according to the dominant model of adult recognition and to traditional markers of adulthood) and what their disadvantaged social condition allows them to do, the paper examines the impact of young men’s gender performances on their transitions to adulthood. In so doing, the article contributes at literature on transitions to adulthood exploring how masculinity – a characteristic that is normally an advantaging factor in transitions– amplifies difficulties derived from other categories of exclusion such as age and class.