Academic Precarity and the Transition to Adulthood: A Qualitative Study of Italian Researchers in Italy and Germany

Abstract

This paper examines how academic precarity shapes the transition to adulthood among precariously employed Italian researchers in Italy and Germany. Drawing on sixteen narrative interviews, it argues that precarity should be understood not only as employment instability, but also as a biographical condition that slows the transition to adulthood and weakens the material and symbolic foundations of adult status. Using an ideal-typical framework centred on weak identities, fragmented biographies, and risk, and grounding this framework in the interviewees’ narratives, the analysis shows how precarious academic work undermines economic autonomy, social recognition, relational stability, rootedness, and the capacity to plan ahead. Rather than treating adulthood as a fixed age stage, the paper approaches it as a socially and materially sustained position within the life course. From this perspective, academic precarity may delay, destabilise, or prevent the full consolidation of adult status across different life domains.