Young people and UK labour market policy: A critique of 'employability' as a tool for understanding youth unemployment
Young people and UK labour market policy: A critique of 'employability' as a tool for understanding youth unemployment
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DOI：
10.1177/0042098016637567
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发表时间：
2017-06-01
期刊：
影响因子：
4.7
通讯作者：
Powell, Ryan
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Crisp, Richard;Powell, Ryan
本文对英国当代以促进年轻人就业能力为重点的政策进行了批判性分析。根据对英国自上世纪70年代末以来解决青年失业问题的政策方法的分析，我们认为，现有对就业能力的批评是“供给侧正统理论”，未能充分理解其不断演变的含义和功能。在英国联合政府的领导下，它越来越多地被殖民为城市治理的目标工具，以使更具惩罚性的有条件福利形式合法化。我们认为，这种殖民主义削弱了可就业性概念作为一种学术工具的价值，该工具用于理解年轻人在进入劳动力市场时面临困难的原因。这篇论文认为，青年转型的概念为理解青年失业提供了更多的潜力，更明确地将这一研究机构与政策联系起来，可以为未来的研究提供一个富有成效的途径。这样的转变需要更长期的、在空间上了解情况的视角，以及更多地强调不断变化的权力关系，这些关系调解年轻人经历更广泛的社会和经济变革。这篇论文的结论是，促进城市青年就业需要进行明显转变，以解决作为政策基础的历史和地理知识和假设不足的问题。
This paper presents a critical analysis of the contemporary policy focus on promoting employability among young people in the UK. Drawing on analysis of UK policy approaches to tackling youth unemployment since the late 1970s, we suggest that existing critiques of employability as 'supply-side orthodoxy' fail to capture fully its evolving meaning and function. Under the UK Coalition Government, it became increasingly colonised as a targeted tool of urban governance to legitimise ever more punitive forms of conditional welfare. We argue that this colonisation undermines the value of the notion of employability as an academic tool for understanding the reasons why young people face difficulties in entering the labour market. The paper suggests that the notion of youth transitions offers more potential for understanding youth unemployment, and that more clearly linking this body of research to policy could provide a fruitful avenue for future research. Such a shift requires a longer term, spatially informed perspective as well as greater emphasis on the changing power relations that mediate young people's experiences of wider social and economic transformations. The paper concludes that promoting employment among urban young people requires a marked shift to address the historically and geographically inadequate knowledge and assumptions on which policies are based.