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@RFMacDonald R.MacDonald@tees.ac.uk

@RFMacDonald R.MacDonald@tees.ac.uk. Confronting the Crisis: youth transitions, social mobility and precarious futures Robert MacDonald, Social Futures Institute, Teesside University. Introduction: caveats, disclaimers, aims. Introduction: aims.

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@RFMacDonald R.MacDonald@tees.ac.uk

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  1. @RFMacDonald R.MacDonald@tees.ac.uk Confronting the Crisis: youth transitions, social mobility and precarious futuresRobert MacDonald, Social Futures Institute, Teesside University

  2. Introduction:caveats, disclaimers, aims

  3. Introduction: aims • …to consider youth transitions (to/ from university) • …in context of socio-economic, political & generational change • …in so doing, to identify elements of a crisis in the relations of education, economy and society - globally, nationally, locally • Parts • Youth Studies & Political Economy: a useful theoretical approach • Signs of crisis? global, national, local • How do we explain all this? • Conclusion – and some live questions

  4. 1. What is Youth Studies for? (MacDonald, 2011)…a ‘new’ Political Economy perspective • (Journal of ) Youth Studies over-privileges direct research with young people - their lives, subjectivities/ agency… • …neglecting how ‘youth’ is constructed ideologically by powerful social actors & forces, & how young people are situated materially (e.g. class inequalities) in a global political economy of neoliberal capitalism • [see Côté (2014) & Copenhagen 2015/ Sukarieh & Tannock (2015 )/ Debate in Journal of Youth Studies (2014, 2016+)/ TASA 2016]

  5. 2. Signs of a crisisComparative lessons… • Young Adults in post-Communist Georgia & Armenia: Transitions to what? (2006) • 2/3 unemployed. Higher education increasingly popular – 66-80% enter university • ‘Most of the local young people go to the local universities. Others go to Tbilisi. They do not get jobs but the tradition of education continues, and it gives the young people something to do’. (Education Department official) • Patience [& migration] dominant youth responses • ‘Those who remain may never abandon hope that the market will arrive eventually—if not for them, then for their children or grandchildren... At the time of our fieldwork the local populations were relearning the arts of living without proper jobs [e.g. via small-scale, subsistence farming] and without the kinds of consumption that are now normal in major cities’.

  6. Comparative lessons…‘Emerging Adulthood’ …or ‘Waithood? • ??‘Emerging Adulthood’ = US, psychology; a new life stage (20s, university student) ‘age of possibilities’, ‘high hopes and great expectations’ (Arnett, 2004). Individualism, optimism, choice. • ??‘Waithood’: global south research; young adults’ aspirations raised (IT, global consumer culture) but blocked from ‘successful’ adulthood; prolonged dependency, boredom, un(der)employment: • ‘one of the most unsettling paradoxes of contemporary social change in the global south is that at almost the precise moment that people formerly excluded from schooling have come to recognise the possibilities held out by education for individual improvement, opportunities for these groups to benefit economically from schooling are disintegrating’ (Jeffrey, 2009; cited in S &T 2015)

  7. Comparative lessons…EU Projects, post-Arab Spring • x2 EUF7 programmes, 5 years, concluding now (March 2017): ‘SAHWA’ and ‘Power2Youth’… • MENA: Tunisia, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, OT Palestine • Social/ political/ economic exclusion of youth • Post-Arab Spring – optimism; how can EU policy help? • 6 years later: war, terrorism, migration, successive autocratic governments; role of ‘deep state’ in perpetuating power & inequality • Some similarities (to UK youth research); but extreme & qualitatively different (e.g. fear/ physical safety/ violence/ harassment/ repressive state/ ‘wasta’)

  8. Comparative lessons…Graduate un(der)employment in MENA • Poverty, corruption, political repression, graduate unemployment (c. 45% Tunisia) Arab Spring (2010-11) • Post-war public sector expansion & professional jobs; still strong aspiration for/ large numbers into university • Crony capitalism of corrupt regimes diverting aid & development funds • Some inward investment by MNCs – but low-level assembly work • Mismatch in graduate supply & demand (34% graduate unemployment in Egypt, 48% for women, under 5% for least educated)

  9. Comparative lessons…The precariatisation of European youth... ‘I think it is probably the first time, at least since the Second World War, that a new generation faces the future with less confidence than the previous generation’. (José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, 2011) • Nearly 5 million under 25s were unemployed in the EU; 21.4% (Dec 2014) • Even higher rates of under-employment...

  10. Comparative lessons…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”(career-less graduates, migrants, unemployed, the working poor, & insecurely employed)

  11. Signs of crisis, to the UK…Degree = ^ social mobility? • in the absence of collective social movements/ progressive welfare state… • in more & more countries… • university promoted as the best/ only route for personal advancement (to good jobs, high standard of living)

  12. The UK – and Teesside Graduate destinations (ONS 2015) • Having a degree = ^ employment, higher skilled jobs, salaries • BUT effects reduced if female, Black, disabled, social science, 2:2/ 3rd • AND gradual decline 2006-2015 in higher skilled employment rate; c.1/3rd graduates not in higher skilled employment • AND not disaggregated by university/ region • e.g. XXX University = predominantly local students who graduate to local (depressed) labour market • ‘Only’ 65% in FT work/ study, and only 40% in jobs that ‘require’ a degree

  13. The UKA message from a Teesside ex-student… • ‘Rebecca’, 22, BSc Youth Studies (Hons), 2:1, 2010 • ‘Just thought that I would email and ask how you are as it is nice to keep in touch! I thought I would let you know I have FINALLY got a job! It’s as a temporary education assistant with a wildlife centre, it's not exactly what I wanted to do but good for now and sounds like it will be good fun! • Have been volunteering with Safe in Tees Valley (YIP) - they will be gone [closed down] at the end of this month, which is an outrage because although …the way they target some young people is flawed, it is wrong to have no targeted preventative services for young people left! I will be gutted as well because I loved working with the kids, really taught me a lot. • Anyway, just thought you might have been interested in what’s going on! Feels so good to be employed, I start on Monday and can't wait! It's good to know that my degree might eventually get me somewhere! Haha’. • [9 months after graduating, Minimum Wage, part-time/ temporary, person spec: ‘a good level of education – e.g. GCSE passes in English & Maths’]

  14. 3. How do we explain all this?a)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

  15. 3b) …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).

  16. 3c) 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 well-qualified people in Tees Valley, with science graduates, for instance, working as school laboratory technicians and in call centres’.(Tees Valley Unlimited, 2014)

  17. 3d) summing up …some elements of the crisis? • Over-supply of graduates… • = declining labour market value of degree(and when compared with rising costs) • = increased ‘need’ for degree (to compete in saturated labour market), even for non-graduate jobs • = increasing demand for degree (including from ‘non-traditional’/ working-class students) • = increasing over-supply, declining value of degree, etc. • = Fierce market competition between universities/ courses (on graduate destination/ ‘employability’/ ‘good degree’ metrics) • ^ pressure on staff (e.g. to give higher grades)? • Complicity of staff in industrial-scale ‘miss-selling’ of Higher Education?

  18. 4. Conclusions: summing up • There is an institutional crisis in the ‘fit’ between (higher) education, economy & society: • a ‘political economy’ frame helps us understand this, as do global comparisons • fundamental to this is the over-supply of graduates to the UK labour market (and elsewhere) • Youth in Transition (Ken Roberts, 2009): research over decades, multiple methods, east and west Europe • Trends in E Europe (and MENA countries?) indicate UK direction of travel: ‘Young people today are excessively ambitious relative to the jobs that the economy offers. There is … an overall shortage of jobs, not least good jobs... underemployment is the new global normality for youth’ (Roberts, 2009)

  19. Conclusions: two live questions • Are young people now best understood as a generation that shares a wide, common experience of precarity? • Or with this institutional crisis do we see the meeting of old inequalities with new ones?

  20. Conclusions: last words • This institutional crisis is masked by ideology (the ‘voodoo sociology’ of the policy orthodoxy): • …that blames ‘failure’ on the lacks of young people(aspiration, skill, social capital, ‘grit’, ‘polish’ etc.) • …shifts the financial & emotional costs of this institutional crisis onto individual students (and their families) • …works in the material interests of businesses, finance companies, private training agencies, corporate HE, etc. (fees, profits from debts, free interns, ‘flexible’ labour, etc.)

  21. Thank you for listening

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