eBook

Unemployed Youth and Social Exclusion in Europe

Wildemeersch, Danny, Percy-Smith, Barry, Weil, Susan Warner

2005,2017

Overview

This book confronts readers with questions emerging from the 'gap' between EU aspirations to reduce youth unemployment without increasing social exclusion - and what is actually happening in practice. Aimed at a diverse readership, it is based on a three year European Union (EU) project into education, training, guidance and employment (ETG) programmes for young adults across six countries. Insights are grounded in the lives and stories of disadvantaged young adults, and of those who work with them, bringing to life unintended impacts of well intended interventions. The authors consider the influence of shifting political and pedagogical ideologies in the EU on local practices and young peoples’ lives and choices. They also consider the impact of policy and performance management discourses ’on the ground’. This work uses rigorous yet innovative narrative forms to invite readers into a ’whole system’ inquiry into these complexities. Unemployed Youth and Social Exclusion in Europe will make an important contribution to reflecting critically on current policy and practice, as well as to academic understandings of unemployed youth, and restrictive and reflexive approaches to learning for inclusion across Europe. Contents: Foreword, Karen Evans. Encounters: Orientations; The research wellspring for this book; Three starting stories: young Europeans being 'Activated' for employment; Youth transition research: changing metaphors and languages in a globalizing world. Lenses On The Shifting Landscape Of 'Activation': Activation practices: an emerging topography; Working-identities in (com)motion; Agency, empowerment, and activation: balancing contradictions; Re-vis(ion)ing professional practice with young unemployed adults. Paradoxes And Possibilities: Policy, Practice And Research: Making the bridge: introduction; Ideologies and policy discourses: impacts from 'On High' and 'Afar'; Restrictive and reflexive activation discourses explored; Learning and improvisation at the policy-practice interface; Epilogue; Appendix; Bibliography; Index. Susan Warner Weil is a Professor at the University of the West of England, UK. Danny Wildemeersch is a Professor at the University of Leuven, Belgium. Dr Theo Jansen lectures at the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

• Publisher: Routledge,Taylor and Francis,Ashgate,Taylor & Francis Group
• Subject: Belgium / Child and Family Social Work / Denmark / Education and employment / Educational policy / EU-Sozialpolitik / EU-Staaten / Europe / European Union / Jugendarbeitslosigkeit / Marginality / Marginality, Social / Marginality, Social -- Europe / Portugal / Services for / Social conditions / social disadvantage / Social integration / Social Justice / Social services / Soziale Ausgrenzung / Unemployed youth / Unemployed youth - Services for - Europe / Unemployed youth -- Europe -- Social conditions / Unemployed youth -- Services for -- Research / Welfare / Youth / youth programmes / Youth unemployment / Youth with social disabilities / Youth with social disabilities -- Europe
• ISBN: 9780754641308, 0754641309, 1138258970, 9781138258976