Explaining Education-to-Work Transitions: Thinking Backwards, Situating Agency and Comparing Countries

Abstract

This paper argues that explanations must start at the end of young people's education-to-work transitions, with employers' recruitment behaviour and preferences, which then govern the content of and recruitment to preceding education and training. Young people themselves exercise agency: this propels their careers forward biographically, but necessarily consolidates opportunity structures (variously called routes, pathways or trajectories) that have been pre-built from above. It is also argued that ultimately the transition regime in every country, and sometimes in each region and business sector, needs to be treated as a unique case study. However, these regimes can be divided into recognisable types which are most easily identified by starting in an economy and its labour markets. Finally, it follows that attempts which start in earlier life, prior to young people entering the labour market, to modify links between social origins and occupational destinations will invariably fail. Effective interventions can be envisaged only by starting at the end of young people's transitions, then thinking backwards.

Youth and the Skills System in Bulgaria. Can Lifelong Learning Policies on the Regional Level Compensate for the Mismatches in the National Skill System?

“…Transitions is a major concept in sociology of youth which treats youth and young adulthood as a social construct rather than a universal phase of a biologically determined individual development. The key advantage of the 'transitions paradigm' according to Roberts (2018) lies in 'its ability to embed the study of youth within the longer life course'. Most researchers of youth trajectories highlight the changes in post-modern societies in which youth transitions become prolonged and destandardised due to growing risks and insecurity in all life domains (Walther, 2006, Stoilova andNyagolov, 2016).…”

Striding on a Winding Road: Young People’s Transitions from Education to Work in Bulgaria

“…The national policy for youth employment developed gradually after the regime change in 1989. It came as a response to the collapse of the system of full employment that existed in the countries of the former Soviet bloc up to the end of the 1980s in the 20th century [5], similar to the situation in most of the Western countries in the 1950s and 1960s [17]. In the eastern part of the continent, under the centrally planned economy, the transitions from school to jobs were rather short and linear, eased by the system of state allocation of graduates, and job changing was strongly stigmatised.…”

“…Youth transitions are embedded in specific socioeconomic and cultural structures and institutional arrangements on multiple levels-national, regional, and local-which govern the opportunities and constraints of individual trajectories [15]. Several typologies of youth transition regimes have been developed [16,17] which either exclude or are not fully applicable to the situation in the post-communist countries in Eastern Europe. Common trends for present-day youth policies in the countries in the region are the contraction of state support in comparison with the communist past and the rise in the importance of the market mechanisms in access to welfare, as well as the preservation of a centralised and comprehensive public educational system with growth in private institutions and a renewed reliance on the family [18,19].…”

“…Various schemes and programs were designed to compensate for the shortage of jobs with the ongoing deindustrialisation and globalisation. Specific features in the design of the Youth Guarantee in Bulgaria are the wider age range of 15-29 (rather than [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] and the inclusion of young people with university degrees [34]. An evaluation by a private company [45] underlined other positive features of the national policy under the framework of the Youth Guarantee: the wide territorial distribution, the inclusion of key stakeholders such as employers, local government, NGOs, labour offices, and private training companies.…”

Young people in the middle: pathways, prospects, policies and a new agenda for youth research

“…Youth researchers have not ignored wider demand side processes but these have often been painted with broad brushstrokes, the context of young people's orientations or decision making or, like recruitment and labour market processes, under-examined Roberts 2017). In section 3 I consider some policy and practice assumptions which surround middle pathways from school and further education (FE) college to the labour market.…”