There is no clear-cut definition of who actually is a young person. Sometimes it is considered as a range of age, a demographical subject or a period of transition from childhood to adulthood. The states and institutions often consider the youth as a demographical object as an age range. Even UN accepts that there is no universally agreed definition of a youth age group while considering the youth age group as 15-24 (UN, 2022). While the EU considers being young is 15-29 (EU, 2016), African Union (2019) defines it as 15-35. Although, we claim that being a youth is far more than just the numbers, but a period of transition, a culture of production derives from the experiences.
Youth transitions and lifetime trajectory changes accordingly to the different sets of criteria depending on employment, education, or life status. This transition is diverse even though the ages are the same from educational and school to work transitions (Bendit, 2006; Chacaltana et al., 2019). Thus, classifying young people on a scale of age has flaws in the approach considering that they have been at different stages of their lives during their youth trajectory. To elaborate, according to Chacaltana et al. (2019); young people who have started to engage in the labour market aged less than 18 tend to work throughout their life trajectories in informal and low-skilled jobs. Thus, it can be argued that young people who are over 18 but not involved in education yet working cannot be the subject of the same policies as those young people involved in education at the same age. Therefore, the policies should be aligned with the needs of young people regarding their certain conditions.
In the published White Paper by European Commission in 2001, it is indicated that the youth age strata is shrinking due to different factors from the socio-cultural factors, being in the different stages of life and trajectories or the economic factors such as employability and unemployment(EC, 2001). It indicates that the policies focusing on the age target as young people should be adopted to the realities of the countries. When the very white paper was published in 2001, according to the World Bank(2022) the youth population in the countries involved in the research was 27.7 million and as of today, the youth population is less than 26.0 million. That shows that the population is ageing, the young people are involved in employment later and the passage from dependent childhood to independent adulthood is lingering.
Aside the socio-cultural factors and being in the different stages of life, the young people are often considered as a “problem” by seeing young people as reckless, tend to involve in risky behaviours, rebellious and delinquent in the society(Bendit, 2006; Wyn & White, 1997). These result with the policies where the young people should be protected from the issues that are making them as “problems”. That negative image leads the policies to be formed as protective measures and results with the limitating the young people in a corner where they do not have any choices put in front of them rather than the choices are already chosen by them for not being a problem. That results with the social exclusion of the young people who are already excluded from society.
On the contrary, the young people are as well considered as the “the most dynamic”, “the striving power of economy”, “assurance of tomorrow” as a positive narrative. That leads the commodification of young people and prepares them to be the adults of tomorrow but not the agencies of today(Yentürk et al., 2008). When this approach is chosen to be mainstreamed in the policy development, the young people are being pushed to the competitive environments which results with the retraction from the society, labour market and education as they do not see themselves to compete within a precarious situations even though, this policy has a positive narrative and a focus of empowerment and development, the competitiveness among young people results with the retraction which we will discuss in next as Ni-Ni(i.e.NEET)s.
Another approach which we mainstream during the implementation of this research is the transition period approach to understand this roadmap from childhood to adulthood and the implications of the social welfare state on the life of young people. However, this process has a discursive implication as considering young people and this transition period as a linear process and being an adult as a final state of the youth trajectory. It implies that young people are “deficient” until they reached the adulthood (Harlan, 2016; Yentürk et al., 2008). Being an adult is considered as the end of the educational journey, the entrance to a labour market and emancipating from the family house while having a new family (Pitti, 2022). Thus, the policies, considering the young people as deficient through this journey of being youth, implicates that the young people end with a competitive and selective welfare structure.
As these trajectories are changing and evolving due to the aging population, there are several terminologies to identify young people who are stuck of being in the state of youth. Prolongation of educational involvement, late economic emancipation from the family, precarious job situations (Pailhé et al., 2014) are some of the reasons that the trajectories are changing. When youth period shrinks or expands,we talk about two different youth groups, “the prolonged youth” and “youth adulthood”. Another terminology, that we used in this project is the “Yo-Yo” group whose alternation of steps forward and backwards through the transition path from childhood to adulthood as they involve in the labour market and become emancipated then they drop-out from the labour market and turn to the education system. That contemporary youth transition is differentiated from the other youth trajectories due to its potential of “reversibility” (Pitti, 2022).Regardless, the youth is prolonged, or its trajectory reversed continuously, the process of youth trajectory is still the question as the exclusion of “unidentified youth” or “does not fit the usual trajectory in mind” are often excluded from the society.
As NEETs are not fitting to the frame of youth, the policies targeted to them are often not giving a fruit. MacDonald (2011) gives us three ways to describe the reasons behind as “high heterogeneity”, “construing NEET as a problem with young people” and “static youth policy categories”. First, we will start from the third reason as “static youth policy categories” which turns a blind eye to the flux of youth transitions and consider the transition period as linear. As in next chapter, we will use this as an evaluation criteria where the policy categories are settled and not changed due to overlooking yo-yo transitions or not at all considering the prolonged youth due to “unfitting the age strata”. Another reason is the high heterogeneity, NEETs living in metropolitan places and rural areas have different needs or there are NEETs just because they are simply caregivers of their family members or they do not have any economical means to involve in the education or training and they are continuously involved in informal economy with precarious job situations. Therefore, the policies simply saying that, we are here to serve the NEETs, not only does not serve the NEETs but overlooks the situation that put the NEETs in that place at the first time.
Thirdly as construing NEET as a problem with young people is the place where the young people are considered as “problem” i.e. considering the youth discourse as a situation of a problem as explained before. Because of very reason, unemployment considered as a product of low skills and aspirations of the young unemployment and the problem of young people becoming NEET is basically can be solved by ‘up-skilling’ (MacDonald, 2011). Youth policies again are not again one size fits all. That approach ends with the overqualification of the young people which results with the prolonged youth and late emancipation. According to (Caroleo & Pastore, 2015), overeducation results with a penalty to the individuals in terms of earnings and employment opportunities while wasting the resources of society without any return. Moreover, due to mismatch between the labour market and the educational system results with the inefficient school-to-work transition system.
School-to-work transition is one of the milestones on the youth transition trajectory. Though, according to the (Caroleo & Pastore, 2015) and MacDonald (2011), considering upskilling or overeducation is not the key to solve the issue of youth unemployment. Because the jobs do not require graduate-level skills become ‘defacto graduate jobs’ with low-pay and without any reward. That results with the non-graduates or low-skilled people to be able to reach these jobs which results with the underemployment rather than unemployment. The overeducated young people are becoming more and more visible in the society without jobs or working in the jobs do not correlate with their studies or the payments that they can receive.
These examples foretaste the heterogenity of the youth transition periods which we will detailed explain latter with interrelating with the participation and the citizenship of young people. Although, even though the youth transitions and youth culture are two rival approaches, we would like to use the both approaches and harmonise both approaches to address the complex challenges that the youth of today faces. Henceforth, we would like to explain the last approach towards to the young people as “youth cultures” i.e. culture derived from the particular experience of being in the state of youth. The youth culture approach simply does not imply that the transition from childhood to adulthood does not exists through provides a middle ground as Bessant et al.(2020) argues.
We are always somebody’s senior or junior. That is why the divisions, into age-brackets or into generations, vary considerably and are subject to (deliberate) manipulation.
[On est toujours le vieux ou le jeune de quelqu’un. C’est pourquoi les coupures soit en classes d’âge, soit en générations, sont tout à fait variables et sont un enjeu de manipulations.]
… What I want to remind you, quite simply is that youth and age are not self-evident facts, but are constructed socially, in the struggle between the young and the old.
[… Ce que je veux rappeler, c’est tout simplement que la jeunesse et la vieillesse ne sont pas des données mais sont construites socialement, dans la lutte entre les jeunes et les vieux.]. (Bourdieu, 1993, p.95 as cited in Bessant et al., 2020)
The above-word are stated by Bourdieu almost three decades ago, though we still consider the youth and age as self-evident facts and constructed without the place, time and struggles. Thus, it is often that Bourdieu refers to the situation that the identity of youth is constructed within the sociocultural boundaries i.e. fields that the society emphasizes or validates. Bourdieu argues that the spaces are interrelated and the age, gender, class should cannot be analysed as separate and natural entities within structures but they should be understood within a play of power that the cultures are reproduced. Thus, the power relations within these structures deriving within the youth cultures should be considered on the discussion of the youth policies.
Feixa & Nofre (2012) define the youth culture as a collective social experience depending on a specific space and tiem as like Bourdieusian approach defines the differentiated cultures through their validation or so to say rationalization process and the struggle between the socio-cultural classes. There is not a clear-cut definition to represent the youth cultures are evaluated within the rationalization process. The youth cultures depends on the social and cultural conditions that they are produced. Social conditions depend on the ones’ generation, gender, class, ethnic and territorial identities while the cultural conditions depend on ideological and symbolic attributions.
As we have previously mentioned that, the aging population of Europe makes the youth transitions de-standardised and unlinear due to increased involvement in education or the economic crisis which makes the young people to question their employment choices and makes them return back to the education. According to the Walther (2006,p.122), the reasons behind this situation is that “pluralization of lifestyles, growth of female employment, labour market flexibilization and the overall trend towards individualization”. These reasons requires an adaptation of the youth policies to these transitions. For example, the young person who withdraws the employment and continues to education is currently overlooked or do not supported regardless the reason such as due to personal choice or even the consequence of the job market. Thus, these young people are often withdrawn from the society, education and employment in long run and no longer participate.
Moreover, the term “young adult” or the betweenness of the state of being youth and state of being adult is more visible due to the prolonged youth and the yo-yo youth transitions. The young people consider themselves not young but adult even though they are not completed the transition linearly or they have already finalised this transition within the age strata. The young people have unequal access to resources and opportunities more often has to make their own decisions. Walther (2006) defines these transitions and their relation with the social welfare structures as below :
Universalistic transition regime has main aspect of schooling where the individualism of the educational path can be guaranteed due to the flexibility of the national frameworks concerning education and training. Social assistance mechanisms does not depend on the socio-economic situation of the families of young people. Counselling towards to employment create ties and linkages between the labour market and education and the public sector has a main role on involvement of the disadvantaged young people by providing counselling, childcare for young parents and etc. Moreover, the policies developed does not consider the young people to be agencies of tomorrow i.e. “future of society” but considers their potential as young persons. The concept of disadvantage is often described individually rather than grouping the young people as separate entities due to their identities. The training and education process is not selective considering the other transition regimes which provides young people set of opportunities and motivates them to choose what they would want rather than overlooking their options within their capabilities or success in the schooling system.
Employment-Centred transition regime focuses education as a occupational pathway and education has a selective nature while training system is standardized. Regardless of the vocational training systems ( “school-based as in France, company-based as in Germany or in Netherlands” ), the system produces a regulated employment regime. The social security coverage depends on the family or state depending on the situation of the young person. Youth unemployment is considered as a “deficit” while the disadvantaged status is individualised. The focus of transition policies construes employment as a focus rather than the personal and individual development of the young person.
Liberal transition regime, where the labour market entrance are over the education and training of the young people and mainly dominating model in Anglo-Saxon countries. Thus, the education and training activities lack of quality which results with the low payment of the young people and consisting highly competitive employment scene. The youth transition phase is considered as an early economic independency which results the consideration of the youth unemployment as a culture of dependency. Due to lack of quality in education and training but high flexibility, the youth in employment face with precarious conditions, thus due to this flexibility of education and employment, the yo-yo transitions occurs often in the liberal transition regimes.
Sub-protective regime is the regime that we focus on within this project due to its application in the countries where we work as Italy, Spain and Portugal. As Italy, Portugal and Spain falls into the sub-protective transition regime where the family and state interplay a role of welfare structure different than the other countries. In Turkey and Greece, we see the same similarities. According Yılmaz (2017), Turkey falls into the same category of sub-protective transition regime for the young people. The sub-protective regimes have dualistic nature where the family and informal work have a huge roles on the life of young people. Due to lack of social benefits alas making these benefits tied to the family, impedes the autonomy of the young people and makes them engage in precarious jobs viz fixed-term contracts, informal job positions etc. Thus, the youth unemployment increases as young people are not often supported by the state because of considering the youth unemployment as a reason of lack of training. As the consideration of youth unemployment as a reason of lack of training results in fore-mentioned reasons, results with the educational penalty seen mostly in Italy and Spain, as the young people involves in education longer times, they retract from the economy and prolonged youth occurs or yo-yo transition regime occurs.
Yo-Yo Transititions are the young people have to change their careers due to precious situations that they are under employment scenes in the transitions regimes that we have explained above or due to their individual choices. This transition regime is often overlooked by the youth policies where the young people are already in employment and willing to return back to education are not supported or alienated. Thus, the policies focusing on the yo-yo transitions and hybridize the education and employment policies to increase the involvement of young people who are not following the “usual” transitions should be the main focus of the policies.
From this perspective, we argue that the transitions within the youth cultures changes and the next, we will argue with the relation of the policies and their interconnectedness with the enabling and hindering factors for the young people. In the theoretical framework, we have used an approach that combines the youth transition and youth culture approaches to define the youth and explain their differences and considering the young people as a group of heterogeneous identities with similarities of only and simply being “youth”. The transition regimes which enables young people even they have fallen out of the safety net of the welfare system to get into track to involve in education and employment and have an autonomous and meaningful life. Sub protective transition regime and Yo-Yo transition regime are the core of this project which we want to discuss and enhance the youth policies towards to a more “unstandardized”, more inclusive but more individual focus policies to prevent the exclusion of young people who go through the painful and exclusive process by involving precarious jobs or informal economy where they do not have social security.
As previously explained in Bourdieu’s own words “La “jeunesse” n’est qu’un mot[Youth is just a word]” (Bessant et al., 2020). Thus, how we interpret the word of youth plays how we construct the policies. These transition regimes impacts the life of young people dreadfully regardless, their age, socio-economic status, their ethnicity, their living arrangements and etc. Thus, considering the “youth” just simply a word will give us more understanding the struggle between “youth” and “non-youth”. Our main reasoning to pinpoint these youth culture approaches is to make more visible the struggles of young people. According Threadgold (2007), the young people’s aspirations depend on their own class position, as the different class position itself comes with the different sets of opportunities and outlooks towards to world.
We argue that the class inequalities and their relation with the construction of the transition regimes are highly important to discuss. The lack point of transition studies and its view on youth is mainly comes from the distinction of the different youth experiences.As the adulthood is the final stage of youth but never comes to the end as the adulthood is fluid and imprecise. Even though, with similar age of people considers in the same bucket, the social divisions differentiates(White & Wyn, 2008). The most distinct differentiation occurs on the experience of the rural and urban youth. White and Wyn (2008,p.6) states that “Hence, young men in rural communities, for example, may have more in common with men in their parents’ generation than with all young people in their own generation.” . Thus, considering the youth as a homogenous group without considering the variables such as living arrangement in an urban or rural area is the lack point seen in transition regimes.
Therefore, considering the different youth cultures is important as young people develop their identities within specific social contexts. Even though, the policies are shifting towards to individualisation and individual identities. The young people’s experiences and identities are tied to the very community they collectively live in. There is definitely a relationship between the young person and the social structure that forms the everyday routines and dispositions of the young person(Bessant et al., 2020; Threadgold, 2007; Woodman & Bennett, 2015). Therefore, the youth policies considering the different youth cultures such as rural youth, LGBTQ+ or minority youth are more compherensive and more inclusive than the others.
During the development of strategies, we have focused on its inclusivity towards to the communities where the youth experiences have distinctive than the transitions that the young people in same countries goes. Hence, the analysis process of the youth cultures depends on the “social conditions” and “cultural conditions”. Social conditions depend on the ones’ generation, gender, class, ethnic, and territorial identities, while cultural conditions depend on the ideological and symbolic attributions. Moreover, as these experiences related to the citizenship status of the young people, in next chapter we will discuss more in detailed about the implications of welfare regimes to youth citizenship, the youth cultures as well as the differentiated citizenship of young people.
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