Much of the analysis of youth labour markets and youth transition from education to employment takes little account of the attitudes and aspirations of young people themselves.
This part of the e-book is a deliberately eclectic selection of contributions that includes pieces written by a diverse range of young people who have been involved in the project as advisors or co-researchers. The desire behind this choice was to provide a platform where young people could give voice to their own perspectives. Other contributions in this part draw on the academic research conducted for the project. Here, researchers were particularly interested in examining young people’s experiences, attitudes and aspirations.
We employed a diverse range of methodological approaches to examine beliefs and attitudes of young people towards work, families, politics and society. This includes testimonials, quantitative and qualitative analysis, experiments, in-depth interviews and participative approaches.
We sought to understand how values towards work, the impact of youth unemployment, poor quality employment and outsiderness with respect to social capital and political participation, as well as aspirations of vulnerable young people in foster care, shaped the perspectives of different groups of young people aged from 16-34.
Policy is often discussed as something that happens to others. This part of the book touches on young people’s own aspirations, providing a platform for how their voices are expressed through different channels.