Abstract
The situation of young people in Europe and their inclusion in the labour market have become key issues on the European employment agenda. The phenomenon of youth unemployment, vulnerability and precariousness have gained the attention of institutions, politicians and the public opinion since at least the mid-1970s, as young workers became one of the most vulnerable social groups in a context of rising unemployment (despite periods of economic boom). Globalization, information and communications technology and the financialisation of the economy have readjusted the world economy, and these factors have influenced substantially the organization of labour, leading to processes of destandardization and rising dualization in the labour markets (Koch and Fritz 2013). Youth is perceived as a fragile subject in the labour market as the numbers of unemployed in the lower age cohorts have been rising significantly through the last decades disregarding gender or level of education. In the European case, the figures show that unemployment among young people has been quite high during the last decade (Fig. 15.1).
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Notes
- 1.
As Bourdieu (1993) argues, youth and age are not self-evident data, but are socially constructed. Certainly, the age cohort associated with youth has been evolving. While in the 1960s, we could speak of people in the early 20s, nowadays the age groups related to youth are certainly broader.
- 2.
Interestingly enough, there is more research on this topic in other latitudes, such as Australia (see e.g. McDonald et al. 2012).
- 3.
It is relevant to pinpoint that the term “young” used in this section refers to people under 25. It is the only option if comparisons are to be established using Eurostat statistics. We are aware that this group division does not reflect neither increased period in education and internships linked to higher education nor people who have retired.
- 4.
We compare here the most recent data available at Eurostat (2013, with some countries experiencing a strong crisis) with data from 2005, when many European countries were enjoying an economic boom.
- 5.
There are two main types of training and apprenticeship contracts in Spain. The “training and apprenticeship” (contrato para la formación y el aprendizaje) involves on-the-job training plus some accompanying study, the worker still being in formal education. The contract cannot extend further than three years. The simply called (and roughly translated) “training contract” involves a graduate (with a vocational training or university degree) working in an activity where his/her acquired skills are put into practice. The contract cannot extend further than two years.
- 6.
Further details about the research and the focus groups selection can be found in Alonso et al. (2009).
- 7.
“Mileurism” was a fashionable term during the last decade, as many young skilled people did not reach the threshold of €1000 salaries per month. During the crisis, salaries have decreased so much that nowadays it is not rare to find lower wages in the labour market.
- 8.
The Vocational Training system in Spain is discussed in reports such as the one by Field et al. (2012).
- 9.
This varies a lot depending on the background though: engineers have generally enjoyed better salaries than graduates with a humanities background. However, there have been complaints by degree holders that they earned less than half of what construction workers did, that is, €1000 versus €3000 (Alonso et al. 2009). These figures need to be taken with caution though. After the end of the housing market bubble, the salaries in the construction sector were cut off substantially and many of its former workers have become unemployed.
- 10.
Oposición refers in this context to public examinations, which are the most commonly used form of hiring civil servants in Spain. They are required even for low-skilled jobs in public administration and passing them means, in most of the cases, gaining access to a lifetime job.
- 11.
The Erasmus programme is a very popular EU students Exchange programme.
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Alonso, L.E., Rodríguez, C.J.F. (2017). Young Workers in Europe: Perceptions and Discourses on the Labour Market. In: Parry, E., McCarthy, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Age Diversity and Work. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46781-2_15
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