Not just a number? NEETs,data and datalogical systems

This paper draws on empirical research with NEET populations (16–24-year-olds not in education, employment or training) in the U.K. in order to engage with issues around identification, data and metrics produced through datalogical systems. Our aim is to bridge contemporary discourses around data, digital bureaucracy and datalogical systems with empirical material drawn from a long-term ethnographic project with NEET groups in Leeds, U.K. in order to highlight the way datalogical systems ideologically and politically shape people’s lives. We argue that NEET is a long-standing data category that does work and has resonance within wider datalogical systems. Secondly, that these systems are decision-making and far from benign. They have real impact on people’s lives – not just in a straightforwardly, but in obscure, complex and uneven ways which makes the potential for disruption or intervention increasingly problematic. Finally, these datalogical systems also implicate and are generated by us, even as we seek to critique them.     

大学毕业生“啃老”现象原因探析

大学毕业生的“啃老”现象被视为一道灰色“风景线”,令人深思。本文重点从个体、家庭及社会三个维度探讨其原因所在,以期为有效化解这一问题提供理论参考。个体层面的“不想长大”与“精英”情结,家庭层面的“责任伦理”与“孩子=学生”,社会层面的教育弊端与双二元结构,是催生“啃老”现象的主要因素。     

关于中国NEET的分析

文章通过分析中国的NEET(notineducation.employ-mentortraining)状况,认为中国NEET族人数众多,并从其产生原因着手,认为中国NEET有进一步增加的趋势,在分析可能带来的危害之后,对解决办法提出简单的对策建议。     

School-to-work transitions in times of crisis: the case of Spanish youth without qualifications

This article focuses on the school-to-work transitions of Spanish youth. Herein, we study the pathways followed during a 10-year period by young people who dropped out of school without achieving any qualifications and who did not achieve any at a later date. This is a population aged 26–28 years old with an educational level of ISCED 0–1. The study adopts a plurimethodological approach that includes an initial qualitative phase whose main instrument was the biographical interview and a second phase with a quantitative focus in which data were collected using a questionnaire. The results show the effect of dropping out of education without qualifications on the pathways of the youths as well as their greater vulnerability in the current period of economic crisis, which results in a high percentage of the population that has no employment, education or training. This effect is even greater among women. This study highlights the difficulties associated to returning to education, the reproduction of educational exclusion in the population that did not obtain the diploma corresponding to compulsory secondary education, and a lack of public policies to support this specific population.     

“We believe in you,like really believe in you”: Initiating a realist study of (re)engagement initiatives for youth not in employment,education or training with experiences from northern Sweden

Due to a scarcity of rigorous evaluations and to commence a realist study addressing the lack of knowledge about the workings of interventions directed towards "NEET" youth, this research aimed to understand how and under what circumstances (re)engagement initiatives are expected to facilitate the social integration of young people who are in a situation that prevents them from entering into studies or work. By conducting the first phase in realist evaluation, qualitative interviews with five managerial stakeholders from two northern Swedish initiatives and reviews of documents were carried out for data collection. Using thematic analysis and retroductive reasoning, an intervention-context-actors-mechanisms-outcomes configuration was developed to elicit an initial programme theory that explained how the initiatives were presumed to operate and under what contextual contingencies. The results indicate that the intervention is expected to improve the youths’ wellbeing and engage them in work or studies by strengthening their competence and confidence in a caring and collaborative context. To incorporate the diverse voices and heterogeneous experiences of youth themselves, and ascertain whether the intervention works as intended, for whom, in what conditions and why, the results now need to be tested in selected cases and refined in subsequent phases of evaluation research.     

“被啃族”群体探析

文章选取与“啃老族”相对应的“被啃族”作为研究对象,从“被啃族”的现状入手研究,归纳了其类型,分析了其成因。对“被啃”现象存在带来的一系列后果进行了深入思考,并从多角度提出了解决对策。     

“啃老”现象的社会工作视域分析

“啃老”现象看似属于“私人领域”,但随着不断向社会“外溢”,其影响不只局限于家庭本身,社区乃至整个社会都将为此承担经济成本和社会成本,并将可能引发的系列问题,确实让人忧虑。本文从概念界定入手,运用系统理论,从个体、家庭、学校、社区以及社会等层面对“啃老”现象进行多维度循证,并提出建议对策,以期充分整合社会资源,有效缓解日趋严峻化的“啃老”问题。     

Agency among young people in marginalised positions: towards a better understanding of mental health problems

ABSTRACT

Agency in marginalised youth has been studied from various perspectives, yet the challenges that mental health problems pose for their agency remain poorly understood. Drawing on data from a study on youth transitions fractured by mental health problems, this study sheds light on this important issue. The data consists of 49 life story interviews with young adults. Using Ruth Lister’s four-dimensional taxonomy of agency, the analysis shows how everyday struggles with mental distress are entangled with the practices of the social security system, medical care, education, labour markets, and work life. It also reveals how emerging attempts at strategic agency can fail or flourish depending on the response of the social and structural context. If strategic agency is restricted by institutional practices, it will soon return to day-to-day struggling or become everyday resistance and cynicism towards the system. However, if the strategic agency is supported by institutional practices, a genuine path out of distress emerges. The paper suggests that taking seriously the experiences of mental distress and situating them in a specific socio-political context is essential for understanding youth agency today.     

Once a NEET always a NEET? Experiences of employment and unemployment among youth in a job training programme in Taiwan

Chen Y‐W. Once a NEET always a NEET? Experiences of employment and unemployment among youth in a job training programme in Taiwan Int J Soc Welfare 2011: 20: 33–42 © 2009 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. Ten previous participants in a job training programme, ages between 15 and 20, were interviewed face‐to‐face to determine why they were not employed, in education or in vocational training (represented by the acronym NEET) at the time, as well as their related experiences. They were also asked about their experiences and opinions regarding the training programme and their ideas about work in general. Results of the study indicate that most of the respondents did not become NEETs by choice; they did so for economic reasons. Most thought the programme was of little practical help to them and did not increase their chances of employment, but that it did give them social and emotional support and helped them feel better about themselves. Many agreed that the monetary allowance offered by the programme was a good incentive for participation. Implications of the findings for social policy and programme development, especially to the socio‐cultural context of Taiwan, are discussed.     

From ‘Employab-ility’ to ‘Entrepreneurial-ity’ in Spain: youth in the spotlight in times of crisis

This paper discusses the processes of individualisation of work and redefinition of the referential category of worker fostered by youth employability schemes in Spain. Employability measures proposed by the recent Spanish Youth Guarantee Implementation Plan and its antithetical youth representations (as a group ‘without qualities’ – the ‘NEETS’– while at the same time as a referential value and cultural model – ‘the young entrepreneur’-) will be analysed. These paradoxes strengthened by employability policies, and further aggravated in the wake of the current economic crisis, do not give rise to political contradictions due to the depolitisation promoted by employability policies: social problems are converted into individual deficits. These processes of psychologisation of work are further discussed on the basis of a recent study on employment counselling and career guidance to help to enhance the employability of jobless people in three Spanish cities, Seville, Madrid and Valencia. These tools are aimed at fostering employability of unemployed people with a high risk of social exclusion and are emblematic concerning the principle of employability (new governance tools, different intervention logics/principles). Some paradoxes concerning employability policies (entrepreneuriality) in the current labour market crisis will be outlined.