Social Work, Social Welfare, Unemployment and Vulnerability Among Youth

Vibeke Bak Nielsen, Petra Malin, Ilse Julkunen, Lars Uggerhøj, Lars Uggerhoj, Vibeke Bak Nielsen, Ilse Julkunen, Petra Malin

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000588606
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Ciencias sociales
• Categoria: Estudios infantiles en sociología

Social Work, Social Welfare, Unemployment and Vulnerability Among Youth critically analyses contemporary welfare state interventions on unemployment and poverty among youth in a context of societal transformation. It also considers how we can develop future knowledge and methods in evolving welfare institutions.

Young people constitute a group that is particularly exposed to high unemployment, identity and future uncertainties, economic difficulties, and educational and housing challenges. Experiences from social work and research have shown that young people often face multiple issues, which are often interlinked. In social work this is a challenge owing to little knowledge on the most pressing needs of different groups – seen from the perspective of young people themselves. The authors focus on the tension points in practice and examine policy developments around young people and welfare dynamics based on discussions and research in the Nordic countries and beyond. In doing so, this book connects research-based knowledge with the challenges social workers meet in their everyday practices.

It will be of interest to all scholars, students, and professionals working within the following fields: social work, social policy, child and youth studies, and sociology.

1 Introduction

Ilse Julkunen, Lars Uggerhøj, Vibeke Bak Nielsen, and Petra Malin

DOI: 10.4324/9781003096795-1

Setting the stage

Youth unemployment and increasing youth poverty have led to diminishing opportunities among young people to act in society (Angelin, 2009; Johansson, 2019; Julkunen, 2009; Lorentzon et al., 2014; Marthinsen & Skjefstad, 2007; Wrede-Jäntti, 2010). The labour market has become divided into sectors with secure jobs and better pay conditions and sectors characterised by poorer job conditions. There is also ongoing and increasing flexibilisation and casualisation of the labour market: a casualisation that affects many young people with limited social networks and weak educational backgrounds. The diffusion and intensity of these risks seem to show a considerable degree of variation among countries and regions, and the risks seem to elicit diverse reactions from societies and policy makers.

The labour market and social policy addressing youth unemployment have changed dramatically since the 2000s, and there is little evidence that youth unemployment, or measures needed to counter it, would be less in the future. Greater financial constraints have emerged for young people, and receiving social assistance on a long-term basis has increased among youth since the economic collapse of 2008 (Fondeville & Ward, 2014). Even though unemployment levels have decreased in many European countries after the 2008 crisis, levels for youth unemployment remain stubbornly high (Cahuc et al., 2013; Oesingmann, 2017; Tosun, 2017). The common denominator in these situations is the lack of social integration related to limited access to labour market opportunities (Julkunen, 2009). In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, restrictions and lockdowns have resulted in rising youth unemployment rates in most countries, even more since the jobs that normally employ young people to a high extent are the ones hit hardest by shutdowns and reductions of work-force (Eurofond, 2020).

Thus, young people represent a growing concern for governments, which can be seen in the increasing development of government policies relating to them. A Swedish report (SOU, 2013: 74) suggested that this group of citizens is in need of political and social support in various ways, thus implying that the group has problems that the welfare system needs to address in one way or another. However, studies show that a large proportion of the social and health-care system resources used for young people do not seem to be well coordinated or produce intended outcomes (Mertanen, 2020). Correspondingly, the welfare strategies of the Nordic countries seem to fail in addressing transgenerational marginalisation trajectories of youth unemployment and poverty (Aaltonen, 2013).

The increasing interest in the vulnerable situations of young people has not been specifically focused on social welfare, social work, and welfare practices. Practices and policies are underexplored themes in research. Exploring practices in welfare institutions is of relevance for the development of qualitative and productive measures addressing youth who are in vulnerable situations and unemployed, as well as for the welfare professionals responsible for the adaption of interventions (Baadsgaard et al., 2011). While studies of the effects of interventions have demonstrated their relevance in relation to the overall planning of policies, multi-level context-sensitive studies with a focus on concrete and specific elements in individual cases emphasise the importance for the adaption of knowledge-based practices that build on a broad and holistic welfare frame of the individual person. These kinds of practices can also be considered a precondition for successful interventions and enhancement of effectivity in future welfare strategies.

The research network on reconstructing welfare practices for youth

There is an extensive body of research on youth unemployment, as well as vast knowledge on policy developments and their impact on young people. However, these developments and impacts do not meet, and the knowledge produced does not seem to provide a base for future practices. Against this background, thematical workshops were arranged in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland in 2016–2017 to broaden the perspective and include discussions with researchers, experts from policy and practice, and young people themselves.¹ The overarching question discussed was:

How can we critically understand contemporary welfare state interventions on unemployment and poverty among youth in the context of societal transformation, and how can we develop future knowledge and methods of practice to combat poverty and exclusion in evolving welfare institutions?

Previous international studies have lacked interest in frontline social work practices. We believe that addressing these questions set new requirements for research to explore the varied real-life situations among young people and the practices within welfare services. The main interests of the network were thus the outcomes of real practices, and how changed societal and policy frameworks manifest themselves in frontline practices in the Nordic countries.

A series of four workshops/seminars was completed. The Nordic comparative milieu provided a solid ground for comparison, and the workshops built on ongoing studies and discourses within the Nordic countries, but also in a wider European context. The workshops involved around 150 people, including senior, junior, and emerging scholars in different disciplines within social science and educational science. In accordance with our plan, we also invited different actors from public services and policy makers, employment policies, private firms, and NGOs to create a dialogue between different perspectives and gain new knowledge situated within today’s society and policies. A great asset of the workshops was the inclusion of user groups, particularly one user group that followed throughout three workshops and participated in the discussions, giving both practical and theoretical inputs. Involving people who are affected by the policies and practices may enhance the restructuring process of welfare practices.

The seminars and workshops were genuinely dialogical, opening up roundtable discussions for a multidimensional group of people. A clear aim was to focus on ongoing research processes in emerging practices. We set out with the understanding that a form of tuning in could occur throughout the multi-level and context-sensitive process and eventually lead to new and mediating analytical tools. A comparative context-sensitive dialogue involving two commentators from different countries widened the national perspective and gave space for counterarguments during the workshop process, inspiring the scholars and other participants to tentatively construct research and policy actions and thus develop knowledge. The workshops aimed at exploring the manifold mechanisms within policies and practices and the ways in which they are connected to capacity building among youth. These workshops formed the critical foundation of this book. In the following section, we present an overview of the research, policies, and interventions presented in the workshops, and the critical discussion that followed. This overview utilises the work of journalist Christer Blomgren reporting on two of the workshops and the documentation on the last summarizing workshop by the researchers in the network.

The Nordic outlook: focal concerns and beyond

Social efforts have failed despite the offering of seemingly good solutions, and the domains of social work have changed. In this section, we summarise some of the main points and focal concerns brought forward by the participants and presenters in the four consecutive international workshops.

New tools in an old box – cooperation

In enhancing local labour market policy in Sweden, it was found that a focal concern was the lack of cooperation between local public employment service (PES) offices and the municipalities, even though research has proven cooperation among different agencies to be a promising measure to counter unemployment (SOU, 2017: 19). To solve this problem, a delegation developed a model for a contract of cooperation for integrating newcomers into the labour market. Susanne Zander (2016) presented a study on the experiences of contractual cooperation, how the collaboration enhanced knowledge about the target group of young unemployed people entering the labour market, and how these local contracts have improved the municipalities’ and policy administrators’ will to facilitate cooperation. In the discussion that followed, it was revealed that Norway had introduced a similar concept earlier, and although the efficiency of the measure in the Norwegian PES/social service organisation NAV² is still unknown, the collaboration between different authorities has increased flexibility. Comments from the workshop participants revealed a great variety of opinions, some emphasising the risks in solving a problem at a local level by organising local cooperation and amendments instead of a thorough national reform, to cautious optimism about initiatives based on actual local conditions.

Another presentation of an ongoing study from Sweden on cooperation between representatives from PES and three reciprocally different municipalities found that cooperation had begun, but on very different levels and scales depending on the municipality (Kvist, 2016). All representatives expressed solely positive intentions regarding the cooperation but held widely different opinions on how far the cooperation had advanced. Different opinions on preferred actions were evident in that the PES officials prioritised job search while municipalities focused on strengthening the individual. This study is part of a thesis that has been published in 2020 (Kvist, 2020). The qualitative material of the thesis consisted of interviews with 14 representatives of the social partners, including both employer and union representatives, and representatives from the Swedish National Agency for Education and Swedish Public Employment Service (PES).

The workshop participants addressed the aspect that cooperation has produced hundreds of publications, which have mostly been about the expected positive outcomes. However, the workshop participants raised questions about the efficiency of these cooperations and about whether user perspectives had been addressed. They also raised questions about the risks for service users when different agencies and service providers start to cooperate, for instance, in relation to ethics and the risk of falling in between the new systems. It was also expressed in the discussion that new cooperation or new organisations may even endanger fully functional existing networks.

Education – the key to work?

The presentation of Tor Hatlevoll (2016) started off a vivid discussion on education as the key to work. Research appears mostly to support the importance of education for a successful career and for integration in the labour market. Young people with little success in primary school often face more severe problems in secondary school (Julkunen, 2009; Lindblad, 2016b; Lundahl et al., 2017). This raises many structural and institutional questions on the need for flexible curriculum-based education, developing the adult education system, the reproduction of inequality in schools (Saarinen, 2020; Salovaara, 2021), and the need to bridge the gap between school, work, and the outer world. Workshop participants expressed doubt about education being the key factor in success as research indicates that students with work and life experience stand a better chance for employment later in life (e.g. Hammer, 2007; de Lange et al., 2014). In fact, even though young people may be higher educated, their human capital may be devalued due to a lack of work-related competences. Pastore (2018) found that this experience gap generates an experience trap as employers search for employees who already possess competences, but young people need work experience to acquire them.

Street-level perceptions

A comparative perspective on street-level perception of welfare services in Sweden and Australia (Ulmestig & Marston, 2015) was presented by Richard Ulmestig, who found in his comparative study that in Sweden the unemployed meet officials with high discretionary powers but with possibilities of flexibility, while users in Australia face a more rigid welfare system but makes the legal status stronger for the unemployed (Ulmestig, 2016). The results of the study showed that the users, irrespective of the system, were more aware of obligations towards the state/authorities than of their own rights. They also feared appearing ungrateful. The conclusion from the study was that it is necessary to go beyond formal policies to understand the experiences of service users. In the discussion that followed, there seemed to be a common understanding that, independently of the system, there is a lack in the services in taking an individual perspective, and service users seek and value personal relations with public officials.

Paradoxes in activation policies

Katarina Hollertz (2016a) presented a study on local activation policies that had its empirical foundation in almost 70 interviews in three municipalities with local politicians, management, and case workers from the PES, the Social Insurance Agencies, and the municipal offices for social services and the labour market units. In addition, the third sector and private service providers were interviewed (Jacobsson et al., 2017). The paradox that Hollertz referred to was that individualised services tend to become an individualisation of responsibility rather than tailor-made services. Standardised activation programmes, impossible working conditions for case workers, and normative policy concepts develop an outlook of sameness: the officials tend to see the same problems and the same solutions irrespective of the clients’ individual conditions and requirements. Hollertz also described how local actors are trying to create new arenas of collaboration that provide more individualised services to the long-term unemployed. According to Hollertz (2016b), this can be understood as symptomatic of a declining universalism in Swedish welfare policies.

These experiences were also confirmed by the Nordic commentators and workshop participants, demanding further knowledge on the efficiency of the activation process. Large workloads for workers appear to lead to standardisation and neglect of the needs of the individual.

Diversity – bringing in class, gender, and ethnicity

Michael Lindblad’s (2016b) thesis on young adults with migrant backgrounds had a strong focus on class, gender, and ethnicity. A pattern found in the study was emerging around parents w...