Lack of prospects and hopeless job seeking define Greek NEETs’ present and undetermine their future

Credits: SEPAL

An interesting research paper that the Greek SEPAL team recently came across is entitled “Painted from life….” A disengaged youth? Young people and NEETs in a devastated country”.

This Research Paper presents and analyses the findings of the new EEA-funded largescale research Project entitled “NEETs2” (EEA Grants/GR07-3757), which was completed in 2016. The researchers utilize primary nationwide quantitative and qualitative research to map the relationship between Greek NEETs and psychopathology and to investigate the impact of the economic crisis on their psychological profile and life course. They also aimed at a research-based mapping of NEETs’ skills profile and their needs-in-skills.

The findings led to a targeted and competence-based training-reskilling programme and a proposed set of psychological supportive activities to promote the social inclusion of NEETs in Greece.

The research paper raises definitional issues concerning the NEETs, while emphasizing the relation between youth unemployment and NEET rates both in the EU and Greece. Based on the research findings, the paper maps the NEETs profile in Greece, analyses their socio- demographic characteristics by comparison to the control group, namely the rest of the youth, presents findings related to the medical history and health-related characteristics and sketches the psychological profile of Greek NEETs. Furthermore, it studies the impact of the financial crisis on the life course and employability of NEETs in Greece and provides evidence-based insights into their politically-related attitudes and civic values.

According to the research findings, given the ongoing recession in Greece, its impact over-determines adulthood and the life course of young people, things. The researchers suggest that the discouraging and devastating reality, substantially reflected on every key aspect of young people’s life course. Young people in Greece were found to become increasingly frustrated, pessimistic and even angry. Their trust in social and political institutions is shaky, resulting in ideological alienation that is reflected by their political behavior. Lack of prospects, hopeless job seeking, a disjointed labour market, social exclusion, ineffective training and severe cuts in the welfare provisions define their present and undermine their future.

While the long lasting crisis and the subsequent recession limit their future prospects and over-determine their choices, young people are unwillingly isolated from every major welfare provision and from the labour market and are trapped in daily stress, relying almost exclusively on family, that is often already depleted in terms of resources. The researchers state that this is a deadlock that affects self-esteem and maximizes pessimism and anger. They propose that under the circumstances it is not surprising that Greek young people’s survival strategies, mainly, include (any) job seeking and migration abroad, which might probably further increase the existing brain drain of the country.

They conclude that the combination of social vulnerability and pessimism results in both an individualized multi-level withdrawal, as well as a broader institutional disengagement, that becomes a vicious circle and they emphasize that this directly threatens social cohesion leading to further social exclusion.

We wanted to bring this research to your attention, as we think it underlines the importance of the issues at stake that projects such as SEPAL attempt to bridge. The gravity of the reality this research paints is one that leaves us no room, as a society in Greece, to stay idle.However, although the research is on Greek NEETs, the issues brought to light concerns, in our view, every country, as well as the European Community as a whole. A disillusioned, hopeless youth cannot make for a bright future. It is imperative to act upon these issues and change course.

References

https://www.llakes.ac.uk/sites/default/files/59.%20Papadakis%20et%20al.pdf

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