Youth Transitions, Precarity and Inequality and the Future of Social Policy in Europe

Abstract

The chapters in this book present research conducted during the current European economic crisis and offer a timely contribution to the analysis of the conditions facing young people in Europe. The emerging risks have to be understood, as we argued in Chapter 1, not only as an effect of the economic crisis but also as a consequence of longer-term patterns in youth transitions. Furthermore, as we pointed out in Chapter 1, a consensus is emerging on the detrimental combined effects of the economic crisis and of European austerity on youth transitions. For the most part, analyses of the effects of risk on young people’s lives in this new policy environment have been confined to youth studies, and social policy theory has important insights to offer to this debate. Drawing on new research by social policy scholars, this book shed light on the nature of inequality affecting young people and the relevance of welfare structures in mitigating contemporary risks. In particular, this book has offered both a major contribution to understanding risk and precarity facing young people in the crisis (in the contributions of Part I) and to analysing social policies and welfare mixes (in the contributions of Part II). Making sense of contemporary youth transitions requires efforts to describe both the evolution of individual experiences and an explanation of how these experiences are shaped by structural factors.