The present article provides an overview of findings from the UK Economic and Social Research Council's Youth Citizenship and Social Change Project on how young adults experience control and exercise agency in differing socioeconomic environments. The research builds on previous Anglo-German and UK studies (Bynner & Roberts, 1991, Evans & Heinz, 1994, Evans et al ., 2000), which have contrasted the regulated German and unregulated British approaches to transitions into the labour market. In the present new study, the ways in which social changes have impacted on the lives of individuals have been central to the rationale. The Eastern and Western parts of Germany shared a common culture but operated totally different socioeconomic systems during communism. West Germany and Britain had different versions of the same socioeconomic system, but different cultural histories. Britain and Eastern Germany have experienced, from different starting points, strong effects of market forces and deregulation of previous...