Young People in Rural Areas of Europe

Birgit Jentsch, Mark Shucksmith

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138258587
• eBook ISBN: 9781351870641
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Despite an EU-wide commitment to rural development, research has rarely focused on the lives of young people in rural areas, their experiences in education and employment, their perceptions of policies relevant to them, and their possibilities of participation. Based on a two-year European research project on policies and young people in rural development, this edited volume examines these issues and considers young people's experiences of rural life in Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Portugal and Scotland. The volume is organized thematically with each chapter addressing a specific topic in one or more countries. These topics comprise: the attractiveness of rural areas to young people; the impact of programmes under the European Employment Guidelines; rural youth in local community development and partnerships; rural development programmes and their impact on youth integration; the role of social networks; and the transition from education to employment. A number of implications for policy and practice are drawn out in conclusion. This book will be of interest to anyone concerned with the future of rural areas and with those who live in the European countryside.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Birgit Jentsch and Mark Shucksmith

1. Rural Youth and Social Inclusion in the New Europe

Unemployment, especially of young people is a central concern of the European Union, in rural areas as elsewhere. This is not surprising, given that youth unemployment in the EU affects 6% of the total population aged 15–19, and 13.7% of those aged 20–24. There are, however, wide variations across member states. For example, Germany and Austria have rates below 6%, whereas Finland’s unemployment rate for the 20–24 age group is 17% (http://europa.eu.int/comm.dg05/empl&esf7naps/naps_en.htm). While labour markets are not the only important dimension of social inclusion, they are the primary focus of this project.

It is clear that high priority is accorded to these issues of social cohesion and exclusion in the Treaty of European Union agreed at Maastricht and in the objectives of the structural funds. The theme of combating unemployment and reinsertion into work, in particular, is further developed in the Commission’s papers on Growth, Competitiveness and Unemployment and on Social Policy, and is referred to in the Cork Declaration which proposed “an integrated approach”, aimed at “reversing out-migration, combating poverty, stimulating employment and equality of opportunity, and improved rural well-being” among other objectives.

Perhaps most significantly in practical terms, national action for employment has been shaped by the Employment Guidelines for 1998, which were adopted by the European Council in December 1997, following the Luxembourg Job Summit the month before. A common structure for National Action Plans (NAPs) was negotiated, and the Member States agreed to submit their plans by mid-April. The aim of the NAPs is to implement the EU employment guidelines, fight against unemployment, and the harmonisation of basic objectives. The Commission reviewed the actions proposed under the Employment Guidelines 1998, and assessed how Member States have endorsed the policy objectives and targets included in each of the nineteen guidelines. Pne aim is “to increase the effectiveness of labour market policies in fighting youth unemployment, by shifting towards an increasingly preventive approach underpinned by early identification of individual needs”.

Notwithstanding such significant activities at European and national level aiming at social inclusion, the processes of European integration themselves are likely to generate opportunities as well as social exclusion for some groups of people (for example, through the convergence disciplines of the EMU requiring fiscal restraint and reduced social expenditure). Apart from the overarching concerns with promoting an ‘active society’ rather than a ‘dual society’, these changes are likely to have uneven impacts upon different areas of Europe, and one crucial dimension here might be whether these areas are rural or urban. However, most research on social exclusion focuses on urban areas in spite of the fact that social exclusion is also an issue in rural development, the more so as sectoral policies give way to territorial policies, as envisaged in the Cork Declaration (1996) and in the Hyland Report to the European Parliament. The Maastricht Treaty identifies the development of the EU’s rural areas as one of the objectives of cohesion policy, and at Lisbon European leaders subsequently confirmed that rural development should be one of the priorities of Community structural policies. This has been further emphasised in Agenda 2000.

Yet, despite this commitment, we are very poorly informed about rural society across Europe beyond the agricultural industry, and little attention is paid to social exclusion and integration in rural Europe. The few studies of rural labour markets which exist have tended to be concerned mainly with the ‘demand’ side, and pay little attention to employees and their skills. Even less is known about how young people live in rural areas of Europe, their incomes and quality of life, their perceptions of how policies impact upon them, and how they are affected by the dynamics of social and economic change. There has been no comparative study across EU member states of the experience of living in rural society, least of all for young people, although the rural projects in the Poverty 3 programme met for a series of cross-national seminars to analyse issues arising from their own immediate experiences. Notwithstanding these seminars, which inevitably focused on local concerns, the lack of information remains and continues to hamper attempts to formulate effective rural policies.

Rural Europe is subject to major structural changes, both as a result of changes in rural economies and societies and as a consequence of the Maastricht Treaty, the Single European Act, CAP reform, the GATT agreement, the disciplines of the ERM, and the further enlargement of the EU. Memagh and Commins (1992) have pointed to:

• transition to an era of production limitations in agriculture;
• decoupling of income supports from food production programmes;
• reorganisation of industrial production to the possible disadvantage of rural areas;
• growth of the services sector in urban areas;
• centralisation tendencies as a consequence of the single market;
• continuing depopulation from many rural areas;
• the expansion of information technologies, tourism and leisure industries.

To this list might be added:

• counter-urbanisation tendencies in several northern European states;
• the impacts of political changes in Eastern Europe on eastern EU states;
• increasing environmental demands placed on the countryside;
• the effects of European regional policy (the structural funds);
• ageing rural populations;
• declining service provision and fiscal constraints on public provision;
• changing conceptions of countryside itself.

Memagh and Commins indicate that these trends have different implications for differently situated rural areas (for example, remote or accessible) and that they will have uneven impacts on different social groups. “Several groups face the risk of economic and social exclusion…”, yet at this crucial juncture we still know very little about the specific causes of young people’s exclusion from rural labour markets, still less how these will be modified by the macro-trends listed above and by the meso-level of institutions between the state and the individual. In order to develop effective policies both for achieving rural development objectives (for example, through LEADER and through the Structural Funds), and for tackling young people’s economic and social exclusion in rural areas, the EU needs information about the effects of existing policies on young people’s rural labour market opportunities, the causes of their exclusion or inclusion, how these are changing, and how young people themselves respond. This study is in part based on the recognition that it is crucial at the present time to gain such knowledge and to devise effective strategies for rural development policies that broaden and deepen the labour market opportunities of young people in rural areas. of course, in order to achieve such an objective, we need to concern ourselves also with conceptual and theoretical considerations, and these are explored in Chapter 2.

In Chapter 3 we review existing knowledge of these issues and provide such contextual information as we can, drawing primarily on Eurostat data and the Luxembourg Expenditure Survey. We will argue that this data is inadequate, and that our knowledge of rural social exclusion and its causes is still rudimentary. We do have some knowledge from studies in Britain, Ireland and Austria, and a major new French study by INRA, CNRS and SEGESA, but these findings may not reflect circumstances in other rural areas of Europe, particularly given its diversity. Neither do they focus on the specific situation of young people and the effects of policies upon them. More research is required to explore how the systemic failures set out above are related to pathways to exclusion and insertion, and to policies in different rural areas, especially for young people. Until then, it will be hard to frame policies which address the underlying causes of young people’s social exclusion in rural areas of Europe.

This study seeks to answer the questions: How do policies at various levels impact on the ‘pathways’ to young people’s exclusion and integration in rural areas, and how do these differ between social groups (especially by class and gender) and between rural areas? What role can policies play in ensuring the active participation of young people in rural labour markets?

2. Research Objectives

The specific objectives of this research are as follows:

• to analyse in a bottom-up approach in seven study areas (in UK, Ireland, Germany, Portugal, France, Finland, and Austria) the effects of policies and operational programmes at various levels on young people’s integration into rural labour markets, and therefore on social cohesion in rural areas;
• to explore how changes in labour markets, labour market policies and welfare regimes, at various levels, interact with changes in the nature and duration of the youth transition to include or exclude young people from rural employment opportunities;
• to consider appropriate means and levels of policy implementation.

The emphasis is on comparative case studies of how policies inpact on real-life conditions and experiences, and on linking these narratives with macro proc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Conceptual Framework and Literature Review
• 3 The Changing Rural Context
• 4 Methodology
• 5 The Attractiveness of Rural Areas for Young People
• 6 The Impact of Programmes under the European Employment Guidelines on Young People in Rural Areas
• 7 Rural Youth in Local Community Development: Lessons through Partnership
• 8 Rural Development Programmes and their Impact on Youth Integration
• 9 Social Networks, Labour Market and Policy Impact in Santa Marta de Penaguiao
• 10 Experience of Rural Youth in the ‘Risk Society’: Transitions from Education to the Labour Market
• 11 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Appendices
• Index