Social dynamics of the youth's situation in the risk society

The paper deals with the social situation of young people in the risk society. The term ‘young people’ has changed over the past 50 years primarily because of the objective transformation of the youth’s place in society and the acquisition of its new qualities. Nowadays, age limits do not play an important role while the characteristics of the social status of young people prevail and determine its other properties. The author draws attention to the fact that the interest in youth is associated with the type of time and progress perception inherent in the highly dynamic industrial society. Modern society is analyzed as a risk society where the social system with new principles can always be totally restructured due to a number of redundancies. Every social group in the risk society finds itself in a particular risk situation. Basic features of the youth’s situation determine its conflict inclusion in the social structure of society by the reason of opposing requirements for young people in the absence of protection mechanisms. In Russia, the situation is complicated by the specific nature of the commodity economy and the decrease in social mobility.