Youth Unemployment And Job Precariousness

This book explores the relationship between youth labour market marginality and political participation, focusing on the example of Portugal and the role played by austerity policies in shaping patterns of activism. Through integrating primary and secondary empirical evidence with key ideas from classical and contemporary Sociology, the authors illustrate some of the key features of youth unemployment and job precariousness, also highlighting trends in formal and informal activist activities. Central to Youth Unemployment and Job Precariousness is the argument that following the onset of the economic crisis, there has been the birth of what we the authors term 'an austerity generation', comprised of young people facing difficulties in the labour market and uncertain futures. The book also highlights the difficulties young people have in making a political response to austerity, as well as their hopes for the future, including the need to raise consciousness about youth labour market marginalization and to return to more accountable forms of democracy.

Over the last decade, "youth" has become increasingly central to policy, development, media and public debates and conflicts across the world – whether as an ideological symbol, social category or political actor. Set against a backdrop of contemporary political economy, Youth Rising? seeks to understand exactly how and why youth has become such a popular and productive social category and concept. The book provocatively argues that the rise and spread of global neoliberalism has not only led youth to become more politically and symbolically salient, but also to expand to encompass a growing range of ages and individuals of different class, race, ethnic, national and religious backgrounds. Employing both theoretical and historical analysis, authors Mayssoun Sukarieh and Stuart Tannock trace the development of youth within the context of capitalism, where it has long functioned as a category for social control. The book’s chapters critically analyze the growing fears of mass youth unemployment and a "lost generation" that spread around the world in the wake of the global financial crisis. They question as well the relentless focus on youth in the reporting and discussion of recent global protests and uprisings. By helping develop a better understanding of such phenomena and critically and reflexively investigating the very category and identity of youth, Youth Rising? offers a fresh and sobering challenge to the field of youth studies and to widespread claims about the relationship between youth and social change.

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.

Employment relations in advanced, post-industrial democracies have become increasingly insecure and uncertain as the risks associated with work are being shifted from employers and governments to workers. Arne L. Kalleberg examines the impact of the liberalization of labor markets and welfare systems on the growth of precarious work and job insecurity for indicators of well-being such as economic insecurity, the transition to adulthood, family formation, and happiness, in six advanced capitalist democracies: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Spain, and Denmark. This insightful cross-national analysis demonstrates how active labor market policies and generous social welfare systems can help to protect workers and give employers latitude as they seek to adapt to the rise of national and global competition and the rapidity of sweeping technological changes. Such policies thereby form elements of a new social contract that offers the potential for addressing many of the major challenges resulting from the rise of precarious work.

Youth unemployment and joblessness are major issues for national governments and international organizations across the globe. In this respect, the school-to-work transition challenge is increasingly raising the interest of companies, education and training institutions, families and young people themselves, who are often involved in precarious and illegal forms of employment, in many countries of the world. In the field of industrial and labour relations, the school-to-work perspective seems particularly suitable for policy formulation and assessment: the broad and complex range of tools, strategies and policies for enabling youth training and their access to the labour market is deserving of a closer analysis at an international level in a time when jobless recovery threatens national economies. The ADAPT LABOUR STUDIES BOOK-SERIES has in connection been set up with a view to achieving a better understanding of the causes, consequences and possible responses to the issue in a global dimension through an interdisciplinary and comparative approach.