Youth has been in the epicenter of several studies during the last decades, particularly during periods of socio-economic turmoil. In the aftermath of the 2008 global economic crisis, skyrocketing youth unemployment and inactivity attracted growing academic and political concern. A broadly used statistical indicator of youth vulnerability is the ‘NEET’ rate, reflecting the share of young people who are Not in Employment, Education or Training over the total young population. It comprises young people who jointly face the two following conditions: First, they are unemployed or inactive according to standard definitions of Eurostat, and second, they are not receiving any formal or non-formal education or training.
The term was first introduced in the United Kingdom in the late-1980s, after the operational changes in social services that deprived jobless young people under the age of 25 the right to public support and the possibility of being identified as unemployed. Social trends extending the transition period from adolescence to early adulthood led to a broader definition of the term including those between 15 and 29 years. In the discourse regarding the professional and social development of youth and the ways young people should be faring, the most common assessing criteria have been biographical milestones (work and family formation) in respect of biological age. However, besides time, space is a crucial aspect that should not be ignored when analyzing youth. Young people unfold within the labor markets, education systems, social networks and relations of consumption, all of which are affected by local and global – physical and digital – spatial dynamics. In terms of employment, interlinkages between local socio-economic contexts and the globalized market shape the conditions for the entrance of young people into the labor markets across different territories.
The spaces of youth, or else ‘youthspaces’ constitute an effective conceptual tool in understanding the social and spatial drivers in the development of young people’s lives and therefore, capable to approach the contemporary phenomenon of NEETs. The vulnerability of particular regions to youth unemployment and inactivity – regions where NEET rates are higher and more persistent – pertains to several spatially dependent and geographically differentiated socio-economic factors. For instance, the socio-spatial relations of production, i.e. what and where is produced and what types of jobs are created and where, are crucial components of contemporary local markets. Additionally, the extent and form of work flexibility varies across territories, as does young people’s practices to cope with precarity, including various educational programs, internships, and atypical or flexible employment.
Most youth studies draw upon the metropolitan vantage points of global North, ignoring spatial socio-economic differentiations worldwide. However, the highest and more persistent NEET rates have been recorded in the less urbanized and less developed regions, where globalization may have had less beneficial implications. The least resilient areas EU-wise in terms of youth inactivity seem to be (geographically) located in the EU South. Indeed, several peripheral – including insular – regions of the Mediterranean EU have been experiencing high levels of youth inactivity long before 2008 and even during the recovery period, when most EU regions had the chance to bounce back.
Economies across the EU South have historically been vulnerable to crises. Labor precarity, informal practices and flexibility without security have been historically widespread among the younger cohorts of the population in these societies. In most cases, the 2008 global economic crisis only reinforced this disadvantageous condition, and had a severe impact on youth, reflected in a significant increase in youth NEET rates. The crisis brought to the forefront the limited number of job vacancies, with many young people, even the highly educated ones, experiencing difficulties in the transition from education to work. The persisting high NEET rates during the last decade highlighted not only structural deficiencies of local labor markets, but also institutional insufficiencies to cope with growing youth inactivity. Gender divisions and class-related obstacles, that have been amplified during the socio-economic crisis, set further restrains for the entrance of several groups of young people into the labor market across different areas.
Overall, space must not be ignored when studying youth, and particularly when scrutinizing the uneven expansion of youth inactivity and searching for the socio-spatial mechanisms that reproduce precarity, demotivation and social exclusion.
Author
Athina Avagianou, YOUTHShare PhD candidate University of the Aegean
