Conceptualising the Youth Labour Market

Abstract

Throughout the course of the research reported in this volume we have attempted to explore a number of such general ideas about the structure of the youth labour market, which are prevalent in the literature and assess their adequacy in the light of our research findings. Cyclical and structural theories provide radically different ways of conceptualising change in the labour market. Similarly, neo-classical economics and segmentation theory provide different interpretations of the structure of the labour market. In engaging in the two-way traffic of which Elias speaks, our primary task has been to establish the general applicability or otherwise of the various models and to modify them, where necessary, in accordance with our observations of specific events.

People engaged in empirical research often put forward propositions or theories whose merit is that they are truer than others, or, to use a less hallowed term, that they are more adequate, more consistent, both with observations and in themselves. In general terms, one might say it is characteristic of these scientific, as distinct from non-scientific forms of solving problems, that in the acquisition of knowledge, questions emerge and are solved as a result of an uninterrupted two-way traffic between two layers of knowledge: that of general ideas, theories or models and that of observations and perceptions of specific events … It is the objective of scientists, one might say, to develop a steadily expanding body of theories or models and an equally expanding body of observations about specific events by means of a continuous, critical confrontation to greater and greater congruity with each other. (Elias, 1956)