In this ground-breaking book, Jenny Slater uses the lens of ’the reasonable’ to explore how normative understandings of youth, dis/ability and the intersecting identities of gender and sexuality impact upon the lives of young dis/abled people. Although youth and disability have separately been thought within socio-cultural frameworks, rarely have sociological studies of ’youth’ and ’disability’ been brought together. By taking an interdisciplinary, critical disability studies approach to explore the socio-cultural concepts of ’youth’ and ’disability’ alongside one-another, Slater convincingly demonstrates that ’youth’ and ’disability’ have been conceptualised within medical/psychological frameworks for too long. With chapters focusing on access and youth culture, independence, autonomy and disabled people’s movements, and the body, gender and sexuality, this volume’s intersectional and transdisciplinary engagement with social theory offers a significant contribution to existing theoretical and empirical literature and knowledges around disability and youth. Indeed, through highlighting the ableism of adulthood and the falsity of conceptualising youth as a time of becoming-independent-adult, the need to shift approaches to research around dis/abled youth is one of the main themes of the book. This book therefore is a provocation to rethink what is implicit about ’youth’ and ’disability’. Moreover, through such an endeavour, this book sits as a challenge to Mr Reasonable.

Sri Lanka has long been regarded as a model of a successful welfare state in a low-income setting, yet it has not succeeded in creating a sufficient number of good jobs for the increasing number of young people. Hence, young Sri Lankans perceive their country as an unjust and unequal society, in which mainstream institutions have failed to address inequalities in the distribution of resources, as well as of benefits deriving from economic growth. Against this background, 'The Challenge of Youth Employment in Sri Lanka' aims to identify ways to improve the opportunities available to new job market entrants by addressing existing inequalities and to help young people more fully realize their potentials. Drawing from original research and a review of existing studies, the authors use the 4Es conceptual framework to analyze four key aspects of labor markets employment creation, employability, entrepreneurship, and equal opportunity identifying main issues and results, current trends, and possible new approaches.

From an international and comparative perspective, young people’s access to the labour market is a complex issue with certain contradictory aspects reflecting the level of development of labour law and industrial relations in their respective countries. In the most advanced economies, there has been a steady increase in the age at which young people exit the educational system and enter the labour market, giving rise to significant economic and social problems. The increase in levels of educational attainment is associated in some cases with an alarming rate of unemployment among those with academic qualifications, while employers encounter considerable difficulty in recruiting workers for unskilled and semi-skilled positions. The economies of developing countries, on the other hand, are characterized by different trends, reminiscent of the early stages of modern labour law, with the large-scale exploitation of young workers and children, many of whom join the flow of migrants towards the more highly developed regions of the world, with the consequent risk of impoverishing human capital in the country of origin. The ADAPT Labour Studies Book-Series has in connection been set up with a view to achieving a better understanding of these and other issues in the field of Labour and Employment relations in a global dimension, through an interdisciplinary and comparative approach.

What issues, challenges and problems do young people face in 21st century society? How do they make sense of their lifeworlds? Are they proactive or reactive when it comes to dealing with the multiple pressures they face? This book brings together a variety of real life accounts, many of which were assembled from empirical research, that provide an important lens through which to view what it means to be a young person in today's world. One of the main purposes of the book is to challenge dominant and 'taken for granted' assumptions about the young. You will find discussions of the ways in which young people's lives are consistently problematised; how some are denied basic human rights; the way that education systems consistently fail them; and how for some the threat or experience of violence and aggression can come to dominate their lives. This book has been written from a global perspective - it brings together contributors who share an academic interest and professional concern to improve outcomes for young people. Space is given to understanding the importance of developing a human rights framework that will foster young people's potential. We foreground the importance of listening to young people because they have important things to say. The reader will be invited to reflect on: what can happen when young people become politically motivated; the challenges associated with 'super complexity', education and globalisation; the ways in which some young people are exposed to high levels of vulnerability and risk; and how information technology is utilised to secure peer and professional support. This book draws on a range of social science disciplines - psychology, sociology, political science, education studies and social policy. It will be of interest to academics, students and those with the responsibility of developing and delivering services for young people. The contributors hope it will add knowledge, understanding and awareness of the issues, problems and challenges young people face in 21st century society.