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At Risk of Deskilling and Trapped by Passion: A Picture of Precarious Highly Educated Young Workers in Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom

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Young People and Social Policy in Europe

Part of the book series: Work and Welfare in Europe ((RECOWE))

Abstract

Recent decades have seen growing academic debate on the relationship between tertiary education and secure career pathways. In Europe in the 1990s, globalisation, the tertiarisation of the economy, the deregulation of labour markets, the onset of structural unemployment and the ‘democratisation’ of university (Blasutig, 2011) broke down the existing relationship between higher education and secure career pathways. The assumption that expanding higher education will automatically increase economic growth and reduce social inequalities has been challenged (Ballarino, 2007; Schomburg and Teichler, 2006), forcing researchers to revise their theoretical tools and interpretative models.

This chapter is the result of joint work by the authors. However, if for academic reasons individual responsibility must be attributed, Annalisa Murgia wrote Sections 1, 2, 3 and 6 and Barbara Poggio Sections 4, 5 and 7.

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Authors
  1. Annalisa Murgia
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  2. Barbara Poggio
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of the West of Scotland, UK

    Lorenza Antonucci

  2. University of New South Wales, Australia

    Myra Hamilton

  3. University of Kent, UK

    Steven Roberts

Copyright information

© 2014 Annalisa Murgia and Barbara Poggio

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Murgia, A., Poggio, B. (2014). At Risk of Deskilling and Trapped by Passion: A Picture of Precarious Highly Educated Young Workers in Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. In: Antonucci, L., Hamilton, M., Roberts, S. (eds) Young People and Social Policy in Europe. Work and Welfare in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137370525_4

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