Transition to autonomy
Challenges
The text below summarises challenges identified by experts, youth workers and young people themselves in the discussions of various activities held by the Youth Department.
Economic and employment crisis
The current fiscal and employment crisis, entitled by some specialists the Grand Recession has hit hardest young people affecting their short- and long-term perspectives. While statistics show improvement by the end of 2014, the perspectives and realities are still bleak according to the latest ILO Global Trends in Youth Unemployment report:
- Young people in the Developed Economies and the European Union have been hit the hardest, the youth unemployment rate decreased between 2012 and 2014 from 18.0 to 16.0 per cent, and it is projected to decrease to 15.1 in 2020.
- In two-thirds of the European countries, youth unemployment still exceeds 20.0 per cent: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain, and exceeds 30.0 per cent in six Southern Mediterranean countries: Croatia (45.5 per cent), Cyprus (35.9 per cent), Greece (52.4 per cent), Italy (42.7 per cent), Portugal (34.8 per cent) and Spain (53.2 per cent).
- The peak of the percentage of young people not in employment nor in education or training reached 12.4 per cent in 2014 in European Union.
The prolonged crisis has also led to changes in the types of (un)employment situations young people are faced with:
- The majority of European countries are also witnessing an increasing trend in temporary work among youth. The EU-28 average showed a slight increase from 40.0 per cent in 2005 to 43.3 per cent in 2014.
- In the 28 countries of the European Union, more than one in three (35.5 per cent) unemployed youth had been looking for work for longer than one year in 2014, an increase from 32.6 per cent in 2012. The largest increases in long-term unemployment were seen in Italy and Greece, where in 2014 as many as 59.7 and 60.1 per cent, respectively, of unemployed youth were in long-term unemployment.
- Temporary employment has increased, although it is taken up voluntarily by young people, statistics showing that in developed economies of Europe temporary employment is higher among 15-24 age range, and significantly decreases in the 25-29 group and further in 30-35 group.
- Stark contrasts mark the situation: young workers in the Netherlands (69.0 per cent) were working less than 30 hours per week in 2013, and very few of them stated a desire to work more hours (6.7 per cent), while in Greece among the 18.4 per cent of youth was working part-time, two-thirds of these (67.2 percent) would have preferred to find full-time work.
Perception of the market
According to a Gallup World Poll survey, youth in the regions of the Middle East and North Africa and the Developed Economies and European Union were the most likely to perceive the local job market to be bad in 2014; 68 and 58 per cent of youth in the two regions, respectively, felt it was a “bad” time to find work in their local area. Rates were especially high in certain European countries: Cyprus (82 per cent), France (82 per cent), Greece (78 per cent), Italy (99 per cent), Slovakia (84 per cent), Slovenia (78 per cent) and Spain (79 per cent).
Mismatch between education and labour market
A great deal of emphasis has been placed by the media on the so called mismatch of skills between education offer and labour market demand. A recent research among employers done by McKinsey (2014) shows that even tertiary degrees are not to guarantee employment if the specialisation does not correspond with market needs, and education has not ensured important soft skills and work ethic.
The study also reveals that employers are more reluctant to invest in the training of young labour market entrants, and as a result in developed economies young workers are taking up more work for which they are overqualified.
Structural and multiple discrimination
Amartya Sen defined social exclusion as a “ a complex and multi-dimensional process. It involves the lack or denial of resources, rights, goods and services, and the inability to participate in the normal relationships and activities, available to the majority of people in society, whether in economic, social, cultural, or political arenas. It affects both the quality of life of individuals and the equity and cohesion of society as a whole. Social exclusion is a complex and multi-dimensional process. It involves the lack or denial of resources, rights, goods and services, and the inability to participate in the normal relationships and activities, available to the majority of people in society, whether in economic, social, cultural, or political arenas. It affects both the quality of life of individuals and the equity and cohesion of society as a whole.”
Social exclusion manifests itself through a series of interlinked problems, and it is an accumulation of challenges: a dynamic process over time that carries a risk of producing scarring effects on generations.
For those who found themselves to groups already excluded from society before the crisis, the process has doubled in hardships to overcome be it that they were excluded/discriminated regardless on the grounds on which they were excluded.
For young people, social inclusion in society can be understood as a process of realising one’s potential within society and recognition by the society of that potential and contribution. For young people who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, the process also involves tackling and dealing with specific and additional barriers so that they can fulfil their full potential.
Long-term exclusion from participation on the labour market results also in long term effects on young people’s life prospects both in respect to long-term employment and future earnings.
It also has long term negative consequences on their mental and physical health, and creates such feelings of loneliness, powerlessness, anxiety and depression.
It prevents further participation in society, as it also involves incapacity to accumulate social capital and social recognition.
Other elements
Other elements that affect young people’s long term prospects and place them at risk of further exclusion are:
- Education – while progress has been reached to diminish early leave from education, this lower rate suggests that young people are choosing to stay on at school given the lack of jobs and employment prospects. High early school-leaving rates tend to mean that young people lack skills and qualifications, which may result in a higher risk of unemployment and consequently poverty and social exclusion.
- Housing – the age at which young people leave parental home has remained stable within the crisis, with an average for the European Union of 26.3 for male and 23.8 for women, but the average hides away disparities as high as departure well in their 30s for Greece, Italy, Malta and high housing deprivation rates as in Romania (31.7% in 2012).
- Health - While the level of psychological well-being of young people is generally higher than for the population as a whole, unemployed and inactive young people give a comparatively low rating for their subjective well-being. Young people have significantly better-than-average mental well-being everywhere in eastern Europe and in some southern European countries, but for instance in Sweden young people score six points lower than the average population on the WHO-5 mental well-being scale which ranges from 1 to 100. Young people in Europe reported an unmet need for medical examination for reasons of barriers to access in 2011, this need being higher among those from the lowest income percentile compared to those in the highest. Among the causes mentioned: waiting time for an appointment, finding time due to work or care responsibilities, distance to travel to the doctor or hospital, costs.
- Participation – the consequences of the crisis can also be seen in terms of lack of opportunities and disponibility to engage in political or social participation through civil and political organisations. Studies also show a decreased trust in the system and incresead levels of disengagement in traditional forms of participation for young people.
Policy approaches
The policy approach has been and still continues to be focused on standard biographies with a focus on social integration understood as labour market integration and leading to a mismatch between the lived realities and the institutional assumptions and programmes.
This is supported by the withdrawal of young people from employment or training programmes that aim to include them into the labour market, or with the incapacity of this programmes to ensure long-term retention. Other policy approaches involve and support active transition behaviour and self-responsibility.
While young people’s active participation in their transition is a pre-requisite for successful policies, it is important to deal with the tension between flexibility (allowing young people to make choices in respect to their transition process) and security (ensuring a context in which choices are possible for young people and where measures exist to support them in respect to uncertain outcomes and failure).
Youth speaks
In several activities of the Youth Department, we have asked the young people taking part to map out the challenges and support systems they make use of in their transition processes. The graphics below show the results of these conversations: