Youth transitions precarity and place Robert Mac Donald

Youth transitions, precarity and place Robert Mac. Donald @RFMac. Donald r. f. macdonald@icloud. com

the economic marginality of disadvantaged, working-class youth: lessons from Teesside. . . Reflecting on 25+ years of youth research on Teesside. . . We can’t understand young people’s lives outside their social/ economic/political/ historic context; outside of the landscape that frames their lives

Teesside: industrial prowess… to ‘worst’, ‘poorest’, ‘bottom’

The Teesside Studies of Youth Transitions & Social Exclusion [1991] 1998 -now [http: //tees. openrepository. com/tees/] Funded by ESRC & JRF, in some of poorest neighbourhoods in England (Teesside) 186 white, working-class ‘hard to reach’ young adults Qualitative, in-depth, broad-ranging interviews Long-term/longitudinal, following (some) same individuals teens to 30 s. . .

School… a depressingly familiar, classed story ‘Disappointment’ - disaffection - disengagement Underachieving pupils in underachieving schools ‘Our school didn’t really do much homework or nothing, I found. I dunno, there was no encouragement there, I didn’t feel there was anyway…Well, I dunno, maybe if, I dunno…I was in lower sets than a lot of people so I’d just, I think maybe under that mark, there didn’t seem there was enough encouragement…’ (Anthony, 23 years) Some later re-engagement with education/ training BUT, what value had their courses? . .

Non-university post-16 routes often = ‘vague’, ‘muddled’, ‘little value’ (Wolf, 2011: 82) ‘Young people. . are being deceived’ ‘…The staple offer for between a quarter and a third of the post-16 cohort is a diet of low-level vocational qualifications, most of which have little to no labour market value. Among 16 to 19 year olds… at least 350, 000 get little to no benefit from the post-16 education system’ (Wolf, 2011: 7) 28 applications for every 1 manufacturing apprenticeship in Teesside

Underemployment as job insecurity: the Teesside studies Unemployment = common & recurrent …but so was employment Long-term post-school transitions, into 30 s = insecure & non-progressive age 16 -18: School-youth training-unemployment…/ age 1826: job unemployment-FE-unemployment-training scheme…/ age 26 -36: unemployment-job-unemployment. . . Not labour market exclusion Nor a welfare dependent underclass But long-term churning underemployment & economic marginality

. . . a dynamic view of unemployment: ‘the low-pay, no-pay cycle’ Pattern persisted through 20 s & 30 s (and for those aged 40+) – not a ‘youth problem’: casualised, lowpaid/ low skilled/ insecure jobs: factory workers, bar/ fast food staff, care assistants, security guards, labourers, shop assistants, call centre workers

‘Low-pay, no-pay’ insecurity: Richard (30, currently unemployed)… ‘Just jumping from job to job it’s no way to go. It’s a nightmare! Jack of all trades, master of none (laughs). I just want something with a bit of job security - where maybes I can buy me own house in the future rather than just where you’ve got to be on a wing and a prayer type thing… just a job that I can call me own, you know what I mean? Rather than just looking for one all the time or just jumping from job to job’. Since age 16: 15 episodes of unemployment 5 training schemes 9 jobs (longest 18 months), now via employment agencies All low paid

Teesside Studies: summary The marginal transitions equation old, class-based norms & practices about ‘real work’ + massive, locally concentrated de-industrialisation + proliferation of insecure ‘poor work’ + mixed quality post-16 training education & training courses + punitive ‘welfare’ & ‘welfare to work’ system = youth transitions marked by poverty & economic marginality (& intergenerational, downward social mobility)

How do we explain all this? A new Precariat class? (Standing, 2011) Neo-liberal, flexible labour markets give rise to new global class defined by their insecurity of work & life conditions Mass, diverse, global membership, with “youth at the core of the Precariat” - uniting the economically marginal working-class youth of Teesside & career-less graduates from ‘better off’ backgrounds…

How do we explain all this? The government (& academic? ) orthodoxy Low aspiration & low skill → youth unemployment ‘NEET’ (magically) solved by harsher benefit conditionality & ‘up-skilling’ – by expanded FE/ HE Numbers of low-skilled jobs will decline drastically More graduates needed for the current/ coming ‘high-skill, information economy’ Nonsense! This is voodoo sociology

How do we explain all this? the Myth of the High Skills Economy Supply of better skilled workers has increased markedly (with massive expansion of HE; globally too) BUT no equivalent increase in demand from UK employers for skilled/ graduate workers Up-skilling strategy ignores ‘the scale and persistence of low-paid employment within the UK economy … the numbers of jobs requiring little or no qualification appears to be growing rather than shrinking’. (Keep and Mayhew, 2010).

How do we explain all this? The Hour-Glass Economy (Sissons 2012) Growth in ‘lovely’ jobs & ‘lousy jobs’ – hollowing out of middle Underemployment becomes the most serious issue: involuntary part-time work/ sporadic insecure jobs/ over-qualification. . . ‘. . . significant under-employment of wellqualified people in Tees Valley, with science graduates, for instance, working as school laboratory technicians and in call centres’. (Tees Valley Unlimited, 2014)

Conclusions/ summary Disadvantaged working-class young people (e. g. on Teesside) & ‘better off’ youth (e. g. UK graduates) experience precarity as ‘underemployment’ Low-pay/ no-pay churning & economic marginality Over-qualification for available ‘graduate’ jobs Nothing to do with individual’s aspirations! Nor with a separate, distinct underclass We can conjure with the idea of a new ‘Precariat’… Surely it is about the degradation & impoverishment of opportunity structures since 1970 s – through economy & politics - that make some places & populations at high risk of marginalisation and precariatisation?

Thank you for listening