Volunteering in Glasgow, Scotland

This chapter investigates volunteering, much vaunted in recent policy as a valuable means by which young people may gain valuable experience for work and careers. The chapter argues however that policies to encourage more youth volunteering are based on a conundrum: the fact that there is no robust evidence to support the view that volunteering is a beneficial means by which to access paid employment. Case study research of a volunteering organisation in Scotland, which delivers bespoke employability training to young people which includes daily spells of volunteering in a range of voluntary sector workplaces, provides some insight into why this might be the case. Work experience placements can consist of young people ‘time-filling’ with meaningless, poor-quality work and lack of engagement by employers makes it difficult for young people to gain experience in organisations offering paid employment opportunities. However, the chapter underscores the significant contribution of trainers to other beneficial outcomes of volunteering programmes, such as the confidence and wellbeing of young trainees.

Employability in the North East

This chapter explores the rise of the concept of employability and how it has influenced policy and practical interventions to address unemployment. It explores how the concept has been understood as a threshold for labour market readiness or as a process of continual skills development necessary in a flexible labour market. It argues that employability is frequently utilised in neoliberalising forms of governmentality, shifting responsibility of gaining work onto the individual, rather than considering the various external and structural factors that affect employment prospects. A case study of an employability programme in the North East explores the practices through which the discourse of employability acts upon individuals.

Conclusion: Inequality, Liminality and Risk

This chapter provides an overview of the book by drawing out four key themes which emerged through the chapters as of key significance for understanding youth employability in the United Kingdom: regionality, social inequality, liminality and risk. Taking each of these in turn, the chapter demonstrates how the pervasive force of neoliberalism shapes youth employment policy and youth labour markets in the diverse regions of the UK. In order to ‘get in’ and then to ‘get on’, Britain’s young people must demonstrate neoliberal qualities such as individualisation, responsibilisation and resilience to risk. At the same time, the ability to perform this version of the self is powerfully shaped by social structure.

Enterprise on the South Coast

This chapter explores the discourses of enterprise, uncovering the investment in this notion at EU, national and local levels of policy as a solution to youth unemployment. Enterprise emerges as both a driver of economic growth, as well as particular ‘mindset’ required of entreprenuers. Case studies of two different interventions on the South Coast that aim to increase youth enterprise reveal how different conceptions of risk and failure are intertwined with understandings of the young people’s resilience. The chapter demonstrates how these schemes utilised differing technologies of governance although both required young people to take on responsibility for creating their own jobs.

Internships in London

This chapter explores the growing use of internships as a route into certain careers and professions. Internships, particularly unpaid, burgeoned during the years of the recession, becoming a widespread strategy deployed both by organisations to enhance their workforces and young people keen to enhance their CVs with work experience at a time when paid jobs were in short supply. Drawing on case study research conducted in one of the ‘Big Four’ accountancy practices, as well as with young people on less prestigious internships, the chapter argues that internships are a highly exclusive entry route scheme, powerfully structured by social class. They vary considerably in terms of quality, and it is, in the main, those young people with family resources who are able to access and benefit from the most supportive and best rewarded internships in terms of pay, good quality training and employment outcomes.

Introduction: Getting In and Getting On in the UK’s Youth Labour Market

This chapter outlines the key aims of the book: first, to explore what it is like for young people to undergo employability training as a pathway into work in the UK; second, to investigate the strategies and motivations of local policymakers and training providers, whose mission it is to achieve employability skills development indifferent regions of the UK; and third, through the lens of a Post-Foucauldian governmentality approach, to contribute theoretically to understanding of both policy and practice of youth employability training in the UK context. Each of these aims is introduced and the structure of the book’s chapters is presented.