Transitions from education to employment have been a substantial subject on Youth Studies on past decades. The focus has lied on the pace of these transitions, and how they have become protracted due to important changes in education, labour market and regulatory environments. This has turned young people’s access to permanent and full-time employment into an almost unattainable condition, blocking other steps into adulthood. This proposal reflects on the agentic response of a specific segment of young people in respect to these transitional constraints. Every year, a non-negligeable number of young people between 18 and 26 years of age in Portugal applies either to the Military Academies or to temporary contracts in the Armed Forces. Though this strategy, young people have access either to Higher Education training followed by a guaranteed employment for life, or to a temporary contract lasting up to 6 years, which might be followed by a permanent contract if some restrictive conditions are met. However, these employment guarantees come at a cost. The admission into a total institution and compliance with a strict set of values and rules; the voluntary inhibition in respect to young people’s practices and behaviours; the auto-segregation from peers and family. How, with whom and with which information is this strategy devised? How do they negotiate with these restrictions in such an important time of their lives? These and other questions will be answered through the thematic analysis of 40 interviews held with candidates to different positions in the Portuguese Armed Forces.

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youth transitions,armed forces,employment,opportunities,constraints