What is the “life-course approach”?

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The life-course approach is one of the most common frameworks used when studying young people and ‘involves a recognition that, rather than following fixed and predictable life stages, we live dynamic and varied life courses which have, themselves, different situated meanings ’ (Hopkins & Pain, 2007, p.290). Or, in a metaphorical sense, Hockey and James (2003) noted that the life-course approach has ‘been adopted as a way of envisaging the passage of a lifetime less as the mechanical turning of a wheel and more as the unpredictable flow of a river’.

Hockey, J., & James, A. (2003). Revitalising the Life Course. In Social Identities across the Life Course. Palgrave, London.
Hopkins, P., & Pain, R. (2007). Geographies of age: thinking relationally. Area, 39(3), 287-294.