Simone Baglioni

Young People and Long-Term Unemployment examines the consequences of long-term unemployment for the personal, social, and political lives of young adults aged 18–34 across four European cities: Cologne (Germany), Geneva (Switzerland), Lyon (France), and Turin (Italy). Adopting a multidimensional theoretical framework aiming to bring together insights based on the contextual (macro), organizational (meso), and individual (micro) levels, and combining quantitative and qualitative data and analyses, it reaches a number of important conclusions. First, our study shows that the experience of long-term unemployment has a negative impact on different dimensions of young people’s lives. When compared to employed youth, unemployed youth are less satisfied with their lives, more isolated, and less independent financially. Second, however, there are important variations across the four cities. This means that, in spite of widespread retrenchments, in some places the welfare state still acts as a buffer against unemployment. Third, although young unemployed people participate in politics equally if not slightly more than employed youth, the young unemployed are often disconnected from politics. This is so even when they have important grievances to express in the face of high youth unemployment, precarious working conditions, and grim future perspectives on the labor market. This book will be useful for scholars interested in unemployment politics and youth politics, researchers and teachers in political science, sociology, and social psychology.

Young People and Long-Term Unemployment examines the consequences of long-term unemployment for the personal, social, and political lives of young adults aged 18–34 across four European cities: Cologne (Germany), Geneva (Switzerland), Lyon (France), and Turin (Italy). Adopting a multidimensional theoretical framework aiming to bring together insights based on the contextual (macro), organizational (meso), and individual (micro) levels, and combining quantitative and qualitative data and analyses, it reaches a number of important conclusions. First, our study shows that the experience of long-term unemployment has a negative impact on different dimensions of young people’s lives. When compared to employed youth, unemployed youth are less satisfied with their lives, more isolated, and less independent financially. Second, however, there are important variations across the four cities. This means that, in spite of widespread retrenchments, in some places the welfare state still acts as a buffer against unemployment. Third, although young unemployed people participate in politics equally if not slightly more than employed youth, the young unemployed are often disconnected from politics. This is so even when they have important grievances to express in the face of high youth unemployment, precarious working conditions, and grim future perspectives on the labor market. This book will be useful for scholars interested in unemployment politics and youth politics, researchers and teachers in political science, sociology, and social psychology.

Should a citizen’s right to social welfare be contingent on their personal behaviour? Welfare conditionality, linking citizens’ eligibility for social benefits and services to prescribed compulsory responsibilities or behaviours, has become a key component of welfare reform in many nations. This book uses qualitative longitudinal data, from repeat interviews with people subject to compulsion and sanction in their everyday lives, to analyse the effectiveness and ethicality of welfare conditionality in promoting and sustaining behaviour change in the UK. Given the negative outcomes that welfare conditionality routinely triggers, this book calls for the abandonment of these sanctions and reiterates the importance of genuinely supportive policies that promote social security and wider equality.

Social innovation has become a prominent theme in discussions of social policy reform across the world. This book examines why social innovation is important to social policy analysis. It discusses the theoretical and policy context of this concept; its origin and background; why it has emerged to prominence in recent years and how it has been applied. The book relates social innovation to key debates and issues in social policy. These include competing agency and structural explanations of and solutions to social problems; the relative efficacy of government and civil society initiatives, and the capacity of community and/or service user-led responses to address social problems. The book will be a valuable resource for a wide, international readership including social and public policy analysts, policy makers, practitioners and students.

This book provides a Europe-wide comparative analysis of the role of civil society organizations active in the field of unemployment and precarity. It illustrates how crucial civil society organizations are for the inclusion of the young unemployed, mainly in two ways: by delivering services and by advocating policy.

This book provides a Europe-wide comparative analysis of the role of civil society organizations active in the field of unemployment and precarity. It illustrates how crucial civil society organizations are for the inclusion of the young unemployed, mainly in two ways: by delivering services and by advocating policy.