International Youth Day provides an opportunity to celebrate young people, but also to be honest about what shapes their transition into adulthood. It is easy to treat adolescents and adults as separate groups divided by a clean line. Development does not work that way. No one becomes an adult the moment the clock passes midnight on their eighteenth birthday. Social, economic, and psychological transitions that make up adult life, rarely occur according to fixed timelines. For young people facing displacement, migration, poverty or conflict, this is even more so. At A1 Research, our work across international research and consultancy projects has highlighted the importance of understanding these diverse pathways into adulthood. Whether supporting organisations through evidence generation, programme evaluations, or policy research, we have seen how assumptions about typical youth transitions can unintentionally exclude some of the young people most in need of support.
International definitions of “youth” do not agree with one another, and that in itself is telling. The UN treats youth as those aged 15 to 24, while defining children as anyone under 18. That strict cut-off, the age of majority, is where the law stops treating a person as a child. Special protections fall away and adult rights and responsibilities arrive together. But reaching it does not hand a young person the resources to live independently. Youth transitions such as leaving home, finding work, forming relationships are gradual, non-linear processes shaped by family, culture, economic opportunity and political contexts, not fixed events triggered by a birthday.
Migration makes the gap between the legal line and the lived reality impossible to ignore. 
Geopolitical conflicts, such as the current invasion and occupation of Ukraine, create conditions which drastically subvert traditional expectations for when and how youth transitions should occur. Displaced young people often carry adult responsibility for their own survival while being held in limbo, waiting… to learn whether they can return home, reunite with family, work legally or build a future at all. They are asked to integrate into an unfamiliar context and to keep a connection to their own at the same time.
The vulnerability is real. As formal safeguards diminish, exposure to exploitation, trafficking, abuse and social exclusion can rise at precisely the wrong moment. Furthermore, legal systems designed to support these youth oftentimes are not designed with their needs in mind. They offer safety while removing freedom, holding lives in suspension behind paperwork and long waits. One study with young asylum seekers describes this bind, youth impacted by migration and displacement become ‘fugitive’, their legal protection and futures precarious and unsure. As they reach the age of majority; the assumption of maturity throws these individuals into the deep end; now responsible for maintaining their own legality, and with little protection against the full adult consequences should they be unable to.
As Europe continues to debate temporary protection and longer-term solutions for displaced children and young people from Ukraine, there is a growing need for research that challenges conventional assumptions about youth transitions. Systems designed around a typical pathway will keep missing the young people whose paths look nothing like it. Generating meaningful evidence requires moving beyond one-size-fits-all approaches. Evidence that captures young people’s own experiences can help policymakers, humanitarian organisations, and service providers design interventions that are more responsive, flexible, and effective. Robust monitoring, evaluation, and applied research also play a critical role in identifying where existing systems create unintended barriers and where opportunities exist to strengthen support during this pivotal life stage. This International Youth Day, we need to rethink how we approach youth transitions; and youth as a concept at large, and, most critical of all, how to keep the voices of youth themselves at the centre of their care.
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