Levels of suffering among young people have always been much higher than governments suggest. Indeed, policies aimed at young workers have often been framed in ways that help secure conformity to a new employment landscape in which traditional securities have been progressively removed. Increasingly punitive welfare regimes have resulted in new hardships, especially among young women and those living in depressed labour markets. Framed by the ideas of Norbert Elias, Young People in the Labour Market challenges the idea that changing economic landscapes have given birth to a ‘Precariat’ and argues that labour insecurity is more deep-rooted and complex than others have suggested. Focusing on young people and the ways in which their working lives have changed between the 1980s recession and the Great Recession of 2008/2009 and its immediate aftermath, the book begins by drawing attention to trends already emerging in the preceding two decades. Drawing on data originally collected during the 1980s recession and comparing it to contemporary data drawn from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, the book explores the ways in which young people have adjusted to the changes, arguing that life satisfaction and optimism are linked to labour market conditions. A timely volume, this book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers who are interested in fields such as Sociology, Social Policy, Management and Youth Studies.

Young people are a vulnerable category of workers, finding themselves in a delicate phase of their working life: their first entry into the labour market. In many European countries, youngsters are unemployed or have difficulty finding and obtaining jobs. This situation has deteriorated particularly after the crises, recessions and stagnation that has impacted European economies in recent years. In addition to the cyclical or crisis impact, structural factors are also very important. Additionally, prolonged crises, as in some Eurozone countries, have transformed a significant part of cyclical unemployment in structural (long term) unemployment. Young People and the Labour Market: A Comparative Perspective explores the condition of young people in the labour market. The authors present new evidence from several countries, with a special focus on Europe, and offer a comparative perspective. They investigate questions such as which structural conditions and labour market institutions guarantee better youth performance, which education systems and school-to-work processes are more effective and in which countries is gender differentiation less of an issue. All of the aforementioned, as well as many other comparisons which the authors make, are significant in helping to facilitate the successful design of labour and education policies. As the first investigation by economists to explore the complexity of this topic, this book will be useful to both economists and sociologists who are interested in the role of young people in the labour market, and the problem of youth unemployment.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.Policymakers throughout Europe are enacting policies to support youth labour market integration. However, many young people continue to face unemployment, job insecurity, and the subsequent consequences.Adopting a mixed-method and multilevel perspective, this book provides a comprehensive investigation into the multifaceted consequences of social exclusion. Drawing on rich pan-European comparative and quantitative data, and interviews with young people from across Europe, this text gives a platform to the unheard voices of young people.Contributors derive crucial new policy recommendations and offer fresh insights into areas including youth well-being, health, poverty, leaving the parental home, and qualifying for social security.

Based on up-to-date qualitative and ethnographic research, this book examines youth education-to-work transitions in the UK. Using the theoretical lens of a Foucauldian governmentality approach, the authors consider the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of youth employability training and demonstrate how different employability schemes planned and operationalised in diverse geographical and economic landscapes work in practice. The book examines and compares a range of employment entry route programmes and reveals the tension between employability and good quality employment, and the ways in which young people from varying social and regional backgrounds are positioned very differently within this.

This volume brings together a massive body of much-needed research information on a problem of crucial importance to labor economists, policy makers, and society in general: unemployment among the young. The thirteen studies detail the ambiguity and inadequacy of our present standard statistics as applied to youth employment, point out the error in many commonly accepted views, and show that many critically important aspects of this problem are not adequately understood. These studies also supply a significant amount of raw data, furnish a platform for further research and theoretical work in labor economics, and direct attention to promising avenues for future programs.

Including youth in the labour market is a major challenge facing many European countries. This book examines the transitions from education to employment with a focus on Nordic youth in the broader European context. The book combines insights from the social sciences and law by linking the challenges facing young people in general and the more specific barriers facing the more vulnerable groups of young people. Youth, Diversity and Employment provides original insights on the interdependencies or interaction between redistributive and regulatory social policies.

This edited book brings together empirical studies of young people in paid employment from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and in different national settings. In the context of increasing youth labour market participation rates and debates about the value of early employment, it draws on multi-level analyses to reflect the complexity of the field. Each of the three sections of the book explores a key aspect of young people's employment: their experience of work, intersections between work and education, and the impact of other actors and institutions. The book contributes to broadening and strengthening knowledge about the opportunities and constraints that young people face during their formative experiences in the labour market. This book will be required reading for all those working in the fields of sociology, employment relations and education