What drives youth unemployment in Europe? Economic vs non‐economic determinants

This article explores the main determinants of youth unemployment in Europe in the period 2002 to 2014 by estimating panel data models for the 28 Member States of the European Union (EU). Heterogeneity is acknowledged by estimating models for subsamples of countries with “high” and “low” youth unemployment rates. The main results suggest that youth unemployment is more pronounced in countries with poor GDP growth, a low share of construction activity and high public debt. Reduced mobility (owing to homeownership), corruption, reception of a high level of remittances and a lack of possibilities for young people to live outside parental homes are also important factors.     

Desiring Self‐Determination in Research and Beyond: Parental Consent Requirements and Situated Ethics for Migrant Young People Living amid Changing Family Dynamics

How are procedural research ethics complicit in homogenising and paternalising young people? Through a youth‐centred ethnographic study completed in Canada, I illustrate how migrant young people's complex experiences of family separation, responsibility, and autonomy sit in relation to parental consent requirements for research. By complicating notions of childhood and critically discussing capacity to consent, I elucidate how procedural ethics can negate diversity among young people and perpetuate the structural barriers some face in determining their lives. More flexible ethical procedures and responses could reduce barriers and better accommodate young people's inclusion by recognising their specific circumstances, desires and competencies through heightened contextual awareness.     

Social Representations Theory and young Africans' creative narratives about human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome, 1997–2014

Research on social representations (SRs) has often focused more on categorical than narrative‐based representations. However, narratives are considered to play a key role in the organization of SRs. This article describes an empirical study of some 2000 creative narratives about human immunodeficiency virus written by young Africans from five countries between 1997 and 2014 and examines the theoretical, methodological and applied relevance of Social Representations Theory (SRT) for this study and the implications of the study for the intersection between narrative and SRT. The study is unusual within the SR paradigm: it is temporal and cross‐national; addresses a subject whose science has evolved over time; and uses creative narratives as its data source. A narrative perspective foregrounds holistic understandings of SRs as systems of thought. Creative narratives fit well within an SR framework. Our triangulating methodologies foreground categorical or narrative dimensions depending on the objectives of specific sub‐studies. Central Core Theory provides a framework to articulate stability and change within narrative representations. In creative narrative, objectification also happens at the level of plot and characters, such that dominant cultural narratives can be viewed as a form of hegemonic SR. We link with health communication and embrace more critical streams within SR research.     

Parental Perspectives on the Emotional,Relational and Logistical Impacts on Siblings of Youth Who Sexually Offend

This qualitative study explored parents’ perspectives on the collateral consequences of youth sexual offending on siblings through the analysis of interview data among 16 caregivers from 10 Canadian families. Using thematic coding procedures, findings indicated that parents identified a range of safety, emotional and interpersonal impacts on siblings beginning with the criminal justice and child welfare investigations of the sexual offending and extending to siblings’ relationships with the offending youth, their caregivers and other relatives. Results demonstrate the need for greater acknowledgement of, and parent‐informed interventions that specifically address the impact of youth sexual offending on siblings by professionals and non‐professionals (e.g. relatives) alike.     

Youth‐oriented active labour market policies and economic crisis: Explaining policy effort in Greece and Portugal

The starting point of this study is the implementation of seemingly similar youth‐oriented labour market policies in Greece and Portugal. Both countries have suffered high youth unemployment rates and have been pressured to restructure their labour market as part of the rescue programmes adopted during the European sovereign debt crisis. Despite convergence in terms of policy trajectories, there is a significant divergence in employment outcomes. In Portugal, youth‐oriented policies were better‐targeted and structured. Their implementation has been more effective and has involved the social partners from the outset of the crisis. In Greece, policy design failures, administrative weaknesses and unfavourable macroeconomic conditions have limited the dynamics of youth‐oriented policies thus increasing youth insecurity. Τhe analysis suggests that convergence in policy content can be compatible with divergence in terms of outcomes.     

Inequality of opportunity and (unequal) opportunities in the youth labour market: How is the Arab world different?

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) labour market is emblematic of widespread youth unemployment and high discouragement rates, experiencing disproportionately high levels of unemployment among educated young people. Using ILO School-to-Work Transition Surveys for Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia, the authors explore whether this is related to inequality of opportunity or to deeper structural characteristics that create a mismatch between skill demand and supply on the labour market. The low availability of high-skilled jobs and the low value placed on skills gained through the system of vocational training are found to have high explanatory power.     

The NEET concept in comparative youth research: the Nordic countries and South Africa

The NEET concept has become widely used internationally since its emergence in the UK almost two decades ago. This article reviews the adoption of the concept in two extreme contexts in terms of NEET rates, youth opportunities and youth welfare: the Nordic countries and South Africa. The article discusses the situations of NEET young people in the two contexts, and how the concept is used in the wealthy and relatively homogenous Nordic welfare states and in relatively poorer and racially divided South Africa. While the concept has been problematised in different ways in Nordic youth research, it has been more readily accepted by South African researchers. We argue that, in both contexts, the NEET concept can be taken as an invitation to look beyond individual life situations and biographies, and to focus on how structural forces such as the political economy shape young people’s lives. The NEET concept provides a way of discussing changing opportunity structures and how global social forces such as globalisation and neoliberalisation shape young people’s lives in different contexts. The NEET concept is useful in comparative youth research.     

‘Off the wall’: reading community mural making as a contestable site of urban youth governance

This paper weighs in on discussions contemplating the current state of arts programing targeting ‘at risk’ youth as handmaiden to a strategic neoliberal cosmopolitanism. I examine a City of Toronto, Canada, youth governance initiative that sought to link graffiti abatement, neighborhood beautification and gentrification through mural production, and ‘at risk’ youth civic engagement and crime prevention. While these coordinates were designed to harness racialised youth within a matrix of disciplinary practices concerned with risk mediation and economic productivity, program participants and youth workers drew from the aesthetics of multiculturalism as resource to navigate the governance dictates of the Grafitti Transformation Project. I focus on one particular incident that unfolded over a week-long period at a youth serving agency located in one of Toronto’s designated ‘Priority Neighbourhoods’. The incident illustrates in granular detail a politics of multicultural citizenship and belonging articulating at the limits of what was conceived for the project. I then consider analytical and practice lessons to be learned about the political aesthetics and ‘cultures of youth praxis’ by examining the workings of power leveled in such moments of tension, and by assessing the contours of an alternative multicultural sensibility forwarded when disruption occurs.