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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Leisure, Social Capital and Life Turns in Deviant Youth,

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The production of social capital in a specific area of everyday life such as leisure & the different socio-cultural contexts it is experienced in, is a very interesting research issue, especially in the light of certain specific meanings of the notion of social capital, like Bourdieu’s or, more recently, Putnam’s. Nonetheless, this research issue is scarcely taken into consideration in Italy. Building briefly on the literature about the production of social capital in youth’s leisure contexts, this paper is going to present a research on the biographies of young people living in deviant contexts who decide to take a “turn” in their daily lives. In order to observe how the social capital produced during their leisure practices is related to the ways in which leisure creates coping resources in the decision to either begin or interrupt a deviant career, the study focuses on a group of young adults aged from 18 to 29 living in two neighborhoods of Palermo (Italy) who have decided to take a life career different from the expectations of the social context they live in.