Transitional friends? Young people's strategies to manage and maintain their friendships during a period of repositioning

Young people’s relationships, both with close friends and others in their wider peer group, have been the focus of an extensive body of research within the disciplines of sociology, anthropology and psychology. Indeed, the peer-orientation of young people is widely assumed within much of this literature (Bukowski et al. 1996; Coleman and Hendry, 1999), as well as within more popular discourses about youth. Within the sociology of education, this focus has been particularly evident. A considerable number of studies have explored the impact of friendship groups on young people’s experience of and performance within the education system (Aggleton, 1987; Hey, 1997; Mac an Ghaill, 1994; Winiarski-Jones, 1988), as well as the ways in which educational processes may themselves structure young people’s relationships with their peers (Abraham, 1995; Ball, 1984; Eglin, 1984; Hargreaves, 1967). However, although the literature on educational choice has burgeoned over recent years (Gewirtz et al., 1995; Lauder and Hughes, 1999; Tomlinson, 1997), where it has focussed on informal relationships, it has generally concentrated on showing how friends and the wider peer group may influence young people’s decisions about their education (Ball et al., 2000; Roker, 1993). Few studies have explored in any depth the ways in which engaging in the process of decision-making may itself affect young people’s friendships. In an attempt to redress this gap, this paper suggests that it may be fruitful to explore the reciprocal influences that such processes exert on young people’s friendships, and the ways in which these influences are embraced, resisted or pragmatically managed.