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The Present and Future Challenges of Emerging Adulthood in South Europe

MARÍA DEL CARMEN GARCÍA MENDOZA

COORDINATOR

SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS
  • María del Carmen García Mendoza
  • Claudia Andrade
  • Ana Cecilia Serrano Núñez
  • Rocío de la Fuente Martín
  • Diego Gómez Baya
Short CV

María del Carmen García Mendoza is accredited as Profesora Contratada Doctora (Aneca) and works as professor in the Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology of the Universidad de Sevilla (US). At the present time, she participates in the I+D+i TAE III project with competitive public funding (PROYEXCEL_00766) and a is member of the PAIDI research group “Procesos de Desarrollo y Educación en Contextos Familiares y Escolares (SEJ54)” within the same department of the US. She holds a PhD in psychology with the thesis Family Relations during Emerging Adulthood which earned Cum Laude and US Extraordinary Doctorate Award. She has participated as a researcher in several I+D+i projects with competitive public funding, TAE I (EDU2013-45687-R) and TAE II (RTI2018-097405-B-I00) and in the cross-cultural project “Transição para a adultez e relações familiares em Portugal e ajustamento psicológico: investigação intercultural entre Espanha e Portugal”. She has also been awarded an Access to SECTI contract and a Margarita Salas (USE) post-doctoral fellowship in the US.

 

Regarding his scientific production, she has several publications in JCR journals, with an H index of 5 in WoS and 5 in Scopus, with 78 and 92 citations respectively. In addition, 40% of its scientific production is carried out with international collaborations, most notably J. J. Arnett (Clark University, USA), who was the main promoter and father of the study of Emerging Adulthood. She has won 3 Awards for the best scientific publication in Psychology where young researchers participate, one of them being an Annual First Prize. She has also made contributions to the main international conferences in the field, such as SSEA, EARA and ESFR. The areas of research interest are family diversity, family relationships during young people’s transition to adulthood and positive development during emerging adulthood.

Symposium abstract
Emerging adulthood is a developmental stage that arises in industrialized societies and implies a progressive delay in the acquisition of adult roles. This stage is defined by the characteristics of the socio-cultural context and represents a moment of great opportunities for the future, as well as instability in different areas of life.   This symposium aims to advance knowledge of emerging adulthood in the context of southern Europe, as well as identify some of the future challenges in research focused on this period. Young people often have a limited access to well-paid employment and stable work. Therefore, the first paper will focus on understanding how emerging adults perceive what constitutes decent work and analyse possible gender differences in these perceptions. The second paper will address the need to understand the dynamics of family relationships in a context where emerging adults tend delaying leaving the family home. The third paper will focus on the identity process of young people transiting through this stage, exploring changes in the previously validated Identity Capital Model in Spain and providing results from a longitudinal design. The fourth paper will focus on analysing the levels of flourishing (combination of feeling good and functioning effectively) of young people and examine the variables that contribute to their development during these years. Finally, it is also essential to explore the adaptive behaviour among young people and its relation to positive development, which will be the central theme of the fifth symposium paper.