Modelado geométrico y características del diseño de la estructura

The context matters in vulnerable transitions

Our comparative analysis of vulnerabilities across different regimes of STW transitions points to a critical effect of intersectionality, which results in different routes and fragmented transitions between school and the labour market, with women and migrants often suffering the most. Nevertheless, school-to-work regimes reproduce different regularities of inequalities in varying degrees.

Our findings show that regimes characterised by an institutionalised Vocational Education Training (VET) system and strong counselling support for training and employment such as found in Denmark, tend to perform relatively well in facilitating STW transitions of different vulnerable groups. By contrast, France’s employment-centred regime, characterised by fewer second-chance options, creates early disconnection of immigrant youth from education and the labour market. The UK is an interesting case in which vulnerability is not directly correlated with immigration or minority status.

In subprotective Spain and Greece, transitions are the most heterogeneous, non-linear and unpredictable. Limited standard workplaces, unprotected living conditions, and a large informal economy combine with an underdeveloped VET system to make gender and migrant status strong determinants of youth unemployment.

Gender and migrant status matter in vulnerable transitions

Our analysis of the EU-SILC data points at strong evidence of the intersectionality of youth, gender and other forms of vulnerability linked to migrant status.

Young migrant males typically participate more in education than young native males across Europe. In contrast, fewer young migrant females are in education compared to their native counterparts in all countries, with the exception of the Netherlands and the UK.

Our findings also show that in all European countries, except the UK, females had a higher unemployment rate before the crisis, but that the rise in the unemployment rate for young males meant that gender gaps closed and, in some cases, were reversed. As for migrants, they tend to have higher unemployment rates than EU nationals. Particularly in employment-centred France and Belgium, the young migrant unemployment rate is over 25%.

We also found that being a NEET is a more critical issue for females. A larger share of young females stays out of both the labour force and education in Greece, Spain, France and the UK; Denmark reported no significant difference between young women and men. In Greece and Spain, furthermore, NEET rates have been persistently higher among women. The persistence of the gender gap (albeit significantly reduced) indicates continued barriers to employment, education and training for young women.

Our results also suggest that NEET status is more common among migrants than EU nationals; the number of migrant NEETs has grown much faster than that of native

Youth employment Migration and mobility

NEETs. Between 40% and 50% of migrants are NEETs in Spain and Greece, while in employment-centred France and Belgium, the rate of joblessness among migrants is as high as in southern European countries.

Intersectionality matters in vulnerable transitions

Our results suggest that migrant females are the most disadvantaged group in terms of unemployment in all countries. The risk of unemployment is higher for more educated migrant females in employment-centred and subprotective countries. Similarly, the risk of inactivity is highest among migrant females.

In our analysis of STW transitions, we do not consider part-timers as having success-fully transited to employment, since temporary work may be associated with insufficient income and a lack of job permanency. Hence, we treated part-time employment as another indicator of vulnerability. The results show that migrant females are the least likely to be in full-time employment, regardless of their educational attainment.

Finally, we analysed occupations and wages as indicators of the quality of the school-to-work transitions of vulnerable groups. Our findings suggest that both females and migrants, but especially migrant females, are more likely to be disadvantaged. In addition, we observed that young females earn 25% less than the native males in all countries. Even if these groups have the ‘privilege of being employed’, their jobs tend to enjoy lower wages. It is likely that the low occupational scores of migrant women result from human capital issues (lack of language proficiency, unfamiliarity with the labour market of the receiving country), and systemic barriers that may not be intentionally discriminatory but whose end result is disadvantage (Rubin et al. 2008).

Policy implications

Our analysis of the policy environment shows that policy towards youth labour markets is often gender blind and that there is limited evidence of consistent gender mainstreaming. Given the gender gap and its interaction with migrant status identified in our mapping exercise, policies could be more efficient if they recognised gender differences – for example, school drop-out rates for boys, segregation of training opportunities for girls, and the interaction of gender and migrant status in educational choices. Although we find some evidence of good practice that recognises gender differences at the margins and indeed the intersectionality of youth, more could be done for gender and other forms of vulnerability.

There is a growing acceptance of gender mainstreaming, which aims at reversing the tendency to treat gender as a ‘specialist’ field of policy and advocates decentralising institutional responsibility for gender (Daly 2005). While this appears to be a positive development, critical scholars show the concept’s vagueness, divergent interpretations and implementations, and limited impact on gender equality. We suggest that greater consideration of the intersectionalities of gender with other demographic factors can help explain the segmentation of the youth labour market and understand the life-long repercussions for the risk of vulnerabilities.

References

Cortina, Jeronimo, Patrick Taran, Jerome Elie and Alison Raphael. 2014. Migration and Youth:

Challenges and Opportunities. Global Migration Group by UNICEF http://unesdoc.unesco.org/

images/0022/002277/227720e.pdf.

Daly, Mary. 2005. ‘Gender Mainstreaming Theory and Practice’. Social Politics 12 (3): 433-450.

Gökşen, Fatoş, Alpay Filiztekin, Mark Smith, Çetin Çelik, İbrahim Öker and Sinem Kuz. 2016.

Vulnerable Youth and Gender Mainstreaming. STYLE Working Paper WP4.3 Vulnerable Youth &

Gender in Europe

Meeuwisse, Marieke, Sabine E. Severiens and Marise Ph. Born. 2010. ‘Reasons for Withdrawal from Higher Vocational Education. A Comparison of Ethnic Minority and Majority Non Completers’.

Studies in Higher Education 35 (1): 93–111. doi:10.1080/03075070902906780.

Rubin, Jennifer, Michael S. Rendall, Lila Rabinovich, Flavia Tsang, Constantijn van Oranje-Nassau and Barbara Janta. 2008. Migrant Women in the European Labor Force. Santa Monica: Rand Corporation. http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/technical_reports/2008/RAND_TR591.

pdf.

Whelan, Chris T., and Bernard Ma tre. 2010. ‘Welfare Regime and Social Class Variation in Poverty and Economic Vulnerability in Europe: An Analysis of EU-SILC’. Journal of European Social Policy 20 (4): 316-332.

Youth employment

The enlargement of the European Union in 2004 opened up the European labour market for the new, mainly Central and Eastern European (CEE), countries. Many people, especially the young, chose to seize the opportunity and seek employment in Western Europe. Patterns of East-West migration have been diverse: some of the migrants settled in the host countries, others stayed abroad for longer periods, while an important part of migration has been temporary or seasonal.

Research questions

The heterogeneity of migration strategies opens up a number of questions. In our research, we addressed two of them. First, we were interested in how the characteristics of return migrants differ from those who did not return; and second, how well returnees have integrated into the home labour market shortly after their return. These issues are critical from the perspective of home countries for evaluating the benefits and costs of intra-EU mobility. The focus on the years during and following the economic crisis in 2008 reflects the impact of the crisis on the return migration processes.

Research design

The analysis focused on two CEE countries – Estonia and Slovakia. We used EU-LFS data from the years 2008 to 2013 that, despite certain dissimilarities, are suitable for a cross-country comparative analysis of young adults aged 15-34 years. While the two small economies are comparable in their migration rates, they differ in other important aspects, including labour market conditions, the severity of the economic crises in 2008-2009, and social protection spending.

The comparison of these two countries enabled us to identify common patterns of return migration and integration into the home labour market, on the one hand, and particularities of these processes, on the other. We were especially attentive to the role of qualification mismatch while working in a host country, and to the role of macroeconomic factors – GDP per capita and unemployment rate – on the specific characteristics of returnees and their short-term labour market outcomes.

Jaan Masso, Lucia Mýtna Kureková, Maryna Tverdostup and Zuzana Žilinčíková

Migration and mobility

Return Migration to CEE after