Yvette Grelet

Typologies de parcours et dynamique longitudinale

Life Course Typologies et Longitudinal Dynamics: In this paper, we propose a method for developing typologies of individual itineraries that takes into account the dynamics of longitudinal timelines. It applies when these timelines are developed from calendars. The originality of this method lies both in the method of calculating the distance between trajectories, and the classification procedure based on Kohonen self-organizing maps. The main property of the metric is to take into account the proximity between different states and its evolution over time. We propose an application in the analysis of career paths using Céreq data for monthly monitoring over seven years for youths who left the education system in 1998. Our results highlight the importance of temporal dynamics in the construction of timelines of entry into the workforce. Finally, we examine the role and contributions of this method by comparing it to the most commonly used methods for constructing timeline typologies.