Youth, Interrupted? Young Adults, Time and the Future During the Covid-19 Pandemic

This article analyses how the pandemic reshapes young adults’ relationships with time and the future. While youth sociology has already highlighted the significant disruption of young adults’ daily temporalities, we emphasize the need to further explore young adults’ relationship with the « future » and its evolution in times of crisis. Using a life course perspective, we explore how the health crisis has affected not only the immediate time experiences of young adults but also their aspirations and their future outlook. Drawing on 48 life stories of young adults from various social backgrounds in Canada (Quebec and Ontario), we show that the pandemic represents a « shock of uncertainty » for all, necessitating rapid readjustments in one’s trajectory. Depending on living conditions and unequal capacities to « bounce back », life stories become divided into three main pandemic narratives: the fall or « stolen » time, the respite or « recovered » time, and the parenthesis or « suspended » time. Each of these narratives corresponds to a specific experience of the future, whether lost, reclaimed, or just on hold. We highlight how past vulnerabilities influence the very experience of the pandemic, and thus lead to different abilities to project into the future. The discussion identifies key lessons to take better account of time and the future in research on youth in a crisis context.