School withdrawal and first work experience have been seen as two typical events defining youth transitions to adulthood. In its classical formulation, life-course perspective formulated a normative transition model defined by a linear sequence of events following a socially determined calendar. Yet, this approach shows inadequate to explain trajectories characterized by intermittent engagement in either dimension, thus not following a single-event pattern. I use retrospective longitudinal data for the cohort that took part in the 2003 wave of the Program for International Student Assessment in Uruguay to contend that school withdrawal and first job experiences are far from being necessarily definitive transitions. I adjust a discrete-time logistic model in order to analyze the effect of job experiences, both prior and after first drop-out event, on school reenrollment chances. Preliminary results suggest: a) school reenrollment odds dramatically fall after one year out of school; b) while those who had their first job experience while at school are at greater risk of withdrawing, working after first dropout event doesn’t have significant effects on the chances of reenrollment; c) social-family origins has a double effect on school continuity: on the odds of interrupting academic activity and, given an interruption, on the chances of it being definitive rather than temporary; d) Odds of reenrollment decline for over-aged students, those who withdrew by not enrolling at the beginning of the term (compared to those which stopped attendance during the academic year) and those who formed a family of their own prior to or after first dropout.
Key words
Youth transitions, education, work, school withdrawal, school reenrollment.
Cardozo, S. (2012). Trayectorias Alternativas en la Transición Educación-Trabajo. REICE. Revista Iberoamericana sobre Calidad, Eficacia y Cambio en Educación, 10 (1), pp. 108-127.
http://www.rinace.net/reice/numeros/arts/vol10num1/art7.pdf. Cited (Date).
