This article analyses the Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) concept and related indicators and its effects on both youth policies and the perception of young people. It is argued that a ..."weak version" of social exclusion is often used to explain the phenomenon. This leads both to defective policies (as a "victim blaming" approach tends to be developed instead of structural policies) and to the negative labelling of the NEET young people (as research and policies tend to focus on the individual's deficits and thus associate them with negative values). An alternative indicator is proposed, aimed at reducing the heterogeneity of the situations the concept includes and focus on the core NEET group. This restricted concept centres on those individuals who do not seem to have any objective impediment to study or work. Figures are calculated for the Spanish region of Catalonia and results show a lower proportion of people in a NEET situation; that the NEET rates for young people and adults are similar; that the phenomenon is not new; and confirm that it is related to the risk of social exclusion. These results reinforce the need for an approach which is more sensitive to inequalities to improve our understanding of the NEET population and to avoid the stigmatisation of individuals, generations and countries.
Are young people today prolonging their youth? The present concept of adulthood became standardised after the Second World War, when advanced societies experienced a phase of unprecedented ...socio-economic development. These structural conditions allowed the majority of young people to fulfil all the criteria for adulthood relatively easily. However, profound socio-economic transformations have rendered contemporary patterns of transitions incompatible with post-war transition frameworks and notions of adulthood. This study assumes that today's young people postpone entry into adulthood. Many young people in contemporary settings can no longer achieve the qualifiers associated with adulthood. But does this prevent them from reaching mental maturation? The current approach to the process of transition highlights social maturity over psychological maturity, which contributes to misinterpreting the meaning of being an adult today. Recognising the changing nature of the concept of adulthood would provide clearer understanding of the needs, expectations and coping strategies of young people. This paper reflects upon empirical material collected among female university students about to start working life in Finland and France. It sheds light on the distinctive theoretical debate on adult transitions in these two countries and on young women's perceptions on coming of age.
This article provides suggestions and questions to Japanese developmental psychological studies from a youth transition researcher. Over the last few decades, young people's transition to adulthood ...has been lengthened in Japan and other Western countries, with regard to stable employment, leaving home and marriage. In accord with this change, adolescence/youth researchers in America and Europe are introducing and debating new theories, such as Arnett's theory of emerging adulthood, to explain this prolonged transition. The most critical point under debate is whether or not emerging adulthood is a new universal developmental stage for youth in industrialized countries. Arnett claims universality, but other researchers argue that emerging adulthood applies only to middle class youth who can afford to attend universities, while ignoring the experiences of disadvantaged youth. In Japan, although there have been many developmental psychological studies of adolescence, there seem to be few that focus on the prolongation of the transition. It may be a serious point that most psychological research on adolescents focus only on those who will obtain higher education, while less educated youth seem to be invisible to psychologists in Japan.
This paper explores the opportunities and barriers encountered by young rural-urban migrants as they transition from education to work in Kathmandu, Nepal. It explores the opportunities available to ...both male and female youth during their transition from education to work and how these opportunities positively influenced their trajectories. On the other hand, the study also presents the barriers experienced by both male and female youth that may have negatively influenced their education-to-work transition processes. Qualitative interviews conducted with 24 participants show that parents' choices in education, migration to Kathmandu for education or work, going abroad for studies and work, and financial resources were the main experiences of opportunities and barriers influencing their trajectories. Using comparative analysis, gender differences in opportunities and barriers were found among the participants.
This article examines the impact of youth transition regimes (YTR) on the political participation strategies of young people from 26 locations in 12 European countries. The central hypothesis is that ...the way that youth transitions take place in different European contexts determines the position of youth as a group in the system of social relations that Bourdieu calls the ‘social space’. Depending upon this position, young people may be more inclined to participation through institutional channels or political protest, or, in contrast, remain inactive. Thus, the specific context of youth in each society (measured through the exposure to risk and vulnerability, the length of the pathway to adulthood and the role of the welfare state) plays a crucial role in defining young people's political action strategies. Multilevel logistic regression analysis using the MYPLACE survey, the specific operationalization of the YTR and other aggregate control variables reveal that YTR centrality is a very important contextual predictor for explaining different forms of political participation among young people in Europe.
Background: The concept of NEET (young people not in employment, education or training) was introduced to capture the varieties of youth labour market disengagement and has become a standard ...statistical indicator for labour market performance. However, it is criticised for simplifying the heterogeneity of young people in problematic youth transitions and for emphasising their deficiencies in terms of affiliation to key institutions in youth transitions.
Purpose: The article contributes to the research on youth transitions by offering a narrative perspective on the status of NEET. Its purpose is to investigate how NEET periods are embedded and reflected within biographical action and self-perceptions.
Sample: The article is based on the analysis of 21 cases from a qualitative longitudinal study about coping strategies of secondary school-leavers in school-to-work transitions in a city in the west of Germany (altogether, 180 interviews were conducted). During the first wave of interviewing in 2012, the young men and women were 16-20 years old.
Design and methods: In order to reconstruct the young people's biographical experiences of the transition as well as their interpretations of these experiences qualitative problem-centred interviews were carried out over three waves of data collection. The qualitative analysis combined case reconstructions with cross-case analysis of typical narratives, which focused on the identification of key themes organising the biographical orientation of the young people.
Results: In biographical accounts, analysis revealed that NEET periods are embedded in analytically distinguishable rival narratives that establish different selective perspectives on events, choices and experiences. We identify seven main narratives related to the topics of vocational status, self-actualisation, meaningful activity, convenience, money, leisure and life problems. Young people are well aware of the problematic nature of NEET status. On the level of action, they try to avoid or exit them by accepting precarious and de-qualifying activities; on the level of biographical reflection, they use rival narratives to re-embed the NEET experience, to bypass it or avoid mentioning it altogether. We suggest calling this phenomenon 'NEET in disguise' (NID) referring to acts of system justification.
Conclusions: This article shows how young people struggle to avoid and conceal the problematic status of NEET and thus, contribute to the institutionally suggested normalisation of biographical discontinuities.
This article discusses the life-mapping method developed for a research project exploring transitions to adulthood with visually impaired young people. After situating life maps as a kind of ...participatory diagram, the article explains the design and implementation of the life maps, and young people's response to the method. The second half of the article argues for the value of the life map technique to lifecourse geographies in two ways: practically, supporting a narrative interview and as a graphic organiser of young people's stories; and empirically, as a way to answer specific research questions about temporality that are more suited to a graphic method.
Labour markets are characterized by uncertainty and youth transitions by change. This longitudinal study of three generations of Australian women from nine families suggests something more nuanced, ...featuring continuities and discontinuities threaded throughout the lives of daughters, mothers, grandmothers and aunts interviewed over three decades. Discussion focuses on the most recent generation of interviewees, following some of the threads of their testimonies back through previous generations of family to reveal similarities and some differences in their navigation of education and work. The findings suggest that the pathways of women today are more fluid but no more disrupted than previous generations, urging continued wider reflection on the concept of transition in youth studies and related relational, spatial and temporal dimensions of study and working life. Though problematic, the transitions metaphor still has meaning in the non-linear journeys of women as they navigate their ways from school to post-school life.
Sail training voyages have been shown to enhance self-constructs and inter-personal and intra-personal skills. It is suggested through this case-study approach with twelve 14 year-old crew ...participants that such an experience contributes towards well-being and character development in emerging adulthood. An audit of voyage-based experiences generated an inventory of 58 authentic activities and participants completed questionnaires immediately post-voyage (T
1
) and six months later (T
2
) to rate the significance of each activity. The highest rated activities reflected Maslow's lower order of needs with a two-thirds correspondence at T
1
and T
2
. Helming (or steering the vessel) was ranked as the most significant activity by participants in both time periods, although participants had questioned their ability to do this before the voyage. Helming is suggested to activate cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains in an authentic adventure education experience that contributes to hedonic well-being and may provide a course towards eudaimonia.
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