THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCHOOL AND WORK IN A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE- SEQUENTIAL, OVERLAPPING, OR PARALLEL - RESULTS OF A CASE-STUDY IN AMEXICAN METROPOLIS

The transition of individuals from school to work in its specific form and time structure is of great interest to social scientists because of the impact of this status passage on people's complete work and lif e trajectories. In the older industrialized countries this transition occurs in a step-by-step sequence or as a short overlapping period. Ba sed on work trajectories originally collected in Mexico it is shown th at school and work are parallel rather than sequential stages. The fir st job a person takes is relatively independent in form and time from leaving school and seems to have less influence on the work career tha n in the older industrialized countries. A general thesis for further studies could be that while ''deinstitutionalization'' of work and lif e trajectories is as a general trend in the older industrialized count ries-but from a high level of institutionalization-younger industriali zing countries like Mexico will never reach a comparable level of inst itutionalization and normalization of work and life trajectories.