This thesis examines the experience of participants in the Voluntary Sector (VS) option of the New Deal for Young People (NDYP) through a survey of London providers and two case studies between August 2001 and June 2002. By 2001, the government had already claimed that the NDYP was a success. However, extensive evaluations identified increasing numbers of its participants churning between the programme, unemployment and the labour market and that 'harder to help' participants were concentrated in the VS. While their complex and multiple barriers were acknowledged, a supply-side perspective focused on welfare dependency and negative attitudes to work. A welfare state, newly reformed and providing increased choice and attention to individual need, was presented as enabling these young people to improve their employability, while work was promoted as their route to social inclusion. An ethnographic approach combined observation at provider organisations with qualitative interviewing of their clients and staff. Clients discussed their personal and work histories, attitudes and aspirations and experiences of the option. Staff gave their perspectives on clients, implementing the contract, relationships with delivery partners and the option's referral, training, placement and jobsearch stages. The thesis contributes to further understanding of the mechanisms of churning in welfare to work. It looks at how participants' sources of support can conflict with participation in welfare to work and the labour market and how past and current disadvantage create barriers to participation. VS staff were limited in their capacity to acknowledge and address these barriers as a consequence of structural pressures and constraints in implementing the VS contract. Moreover, aspects of provider and placement provider provision replicated their clients' negative experiences of both personal and labour market disadvantage, with the effect of reinforcing their barriers to participation.

No description available.

This dissertation examines whether schools are equipping young people with the necessary skills and attributes they need for employment in workplaces increasingly impacted upon by globalisation, from the perspectives of young people and employers. The researcher adopted a mixed method approach which involved an online survey of young people (aged 14-15) and a number of semi-structured interviews carried out with employment sector representatives and key educational stakeholders. A Young Person's Advisory Group (YPAG) worked with the researcher throughout the study to ensure that young people's views were foregrounded. Findings from the survey indicate some understanding of the concept of 'globalisation' among the young people, yet they were more aware of the implications of globalisation upon wider society than the impact upon themselves at a personal level. Further, in terms of preparation for the increasingly globalised workplace, young people were aware of the changing needs of the workforce and there was generally a sound match between the skills and attributes which they perceived employers to want and their own sense of their personal skills and attributes. The young people surveyed were generally positive about how their schools were preparing them for employment in an increasingly globalised workplace, however employment sector representatives and key educational stakeholders appeared less positive about their levels of preparedness. The practical issues of delivering 'a curriculum for globalisation', particularly in terms of assessment and existing structures and processes challenge the system. There is still opportunity to develop a more 'linked up approach' in terms of educational partnerships. Overall, this research suggests that schools play a pivotal role in helping to equip young people with the necessary skills and attributes for the changing workplace in this globally interconnected world and the skills agenda needs to be reflected in the education system and valued by all educational stakeholders alike.

This research uses discourse analysis to explore constructions of age and the older worker in job search websites. These were identified on a Government website, Age Positive, a central location of age policy. The seemingly objective and factual nature of age and the older worker is ideal for sceptical examination of taken-for-granted knowledge. The de-stabilization of chronology, with age an aspect of equality, makes these relevant topics for investigation. The discourse analytic methodology is located ontologically and epistemologically within theories of social constructionism and discourse, and examines age and the older worker not as essentialist research categories but as díscursively constructed phenomena. ln the context of job search, age (positioned as older age) is constructed as risk and organiser of work; as negative ontology; as difference; as enterprise; and as commodíty. Older workers are constructed as Dinosaurs, Wise Owls and Wrinklies; as having special needs; as different; a safe pair of hands and a good match for marginal and flexible work. The older worker as victim and 'has been' is back-grounded. A minority are 'successful'. Discursive struggle is examined as job search websites seek to accommodate a business rationale that promotes older workers and a legal requirement not to discriminate against younger candidates. The constructions do little to challenge prevailing age norms and organizational structures that marginalise and constrain employment opportunities for older workers. Responding to the under-theorisation of age in organizations (Riach, 2011; Trethewey, 2001), this thesis posits that organizations are 'aged' through discourse, similar to being 'gendered' (Acker, 1990) and 'raced' (Ashcraft & Allen, 2003). This allows examination of the 'aged' claims to nature of organizations, making visible the hidden structures that are not age-neutral but described and conceived in terms of a discourse of older age as decline and of hegemonically defined differences between young and old.

With reference to eight submitted research papers dealing with aspects of ageism both within and outside the employment arena, the discussion focuses upon, consolidates and develops in systematic fashion two key avenues of enquiry that feature to some degree in all of the papers. Part 1 of the Critical Review traces the origins, and investigates the subsequent evolution of the ageism concept in the UK. Three evolutionary phases are located: its initial treatment as a form of prejudice affecting only older people; then as a form of employment discrimination affecting older workers; and its current guise where ageism is treated as synonymous with age inequality per se, potentially affecting all ages. The analysis investigates how and why this shift occurred, concluding that it owed more to utilitarian concerns and vested interests on the part of economic actors than to social justice preoccupations. Elements of chance and timing also played a role, as did questionable stances by academic commentators and age advocates. Given that the current conception of ageism is derived from complex political processes and contingent events, rather than from theoretical debate or popular advocacy, its legitimacy is questioned, particularly its diminished value in challenging distinctive forms of prejudice affecting older people. Part 2 builds on this theme by examining the consequences of subsuming ageism affecting older people within age equality discourses and statute. A case is first set out in support of the original formulation of the concept, by distinguishing old age prejudice from less pernicious forms of age discrimination experienced by younger people. Subsequent discussion demonstrates how age equality constructs embraced in employment law and economic and social policies not only fail to protect older people from discrimination, but can also represent serious threats to well-being in older age, by conferring ideological legitimacy upon workfarism, welfare and pension retrenchment and attacks on the institution of retirement. At a personal level too, age equivalence strictures can be socially and psychologically debilitating for older people, by fostering damaging sentiments of anti-ageing. It is concluded that well-being in older age is best promoted by policies that lie outside the confines of crude age equality frameworks.

No description available.

Across the European Union (EU) persistently high levels of unemployment amongst young citizens risk the creation of a 'lost generation' of individuals. In response, the European Commission has launched a number of measures aimed at fostering strong levels of youth employment, including the Youth Employment Package (YEP) and the Young Employment Initiative (YEI). Their ultimate delivery however, depends heavily on the aspirations and capacity of the member states, both at the national-level, and crucially, at the local level. This thesis investigates the extent to which the concept of multi-level governance (MLG) can help us to understand policy-making and implementation in the field of EU youth employment policy. It focusses specifically on the distinct national and subnational experiences of two highly unitary EU member states, the UK (England) and France. Unitary states, often overlooked within the MLG scholarship in favour of decentralised and federal states, offer a valuable opportunity to identify the specific internal and external factors that serve to enable, support, hinder or block instances of multi-level governance- which may be missed in more conducive settings. Indeed, at first glance, this thesis finds that national state-executives dominate the policy-making and implementation processes around EU youth employment policy. Critically, however, a deeper investigation discovers that they are unable to monopolise these processes. Instead, the picture painted in this thesis is one of contestation, rivalry, and conflicting interests between the supranational, national and subnational tiers. The thesis consequently reveals important implications for the MLG literature.

No description available.

My thesis comprises of three stand‐alone papers, which are connected by the theme of social protection and human capital accumulation. In the first paper, using experimental data from South Sudan, I focus on evaluating the effects of food transfer on household labour supply decisions and crowding‐out of informal private transfers. I do not observe significant impact on either of these two domains, except reduction in child labour. This effect corresponds with increased school enrolment of children. I find that positive income shocks from short‐term food transfers induced the households to invest in durable goods, and child ‘non‐work’ is a luxury good for the ultra‐poor. The second paper evaluates the effects of a policy related to exam standard on labour market performance of secondary school graduates in Bangladesh. Using a natural experiment, the paper shows that lowering standard reduced labour market returns for the graduates. General equilibrium effects of increased supply of graduates and lower human capital accumulation due to lower standard have been identified as possible mechanisms underlying this labour market effect. In my third paper, I evaluate the effects of an asset transfer programme for the ultra‐poor in Bangladesh on children’s enrolment. I find that despite exceptionally large positive impact on household income, asset transfer did not increase enrolment rates. Moreover, there was increased demand for child labour in these households. The evidence suggests that asset transfer may not be sufficient to increase school enrolment among households in extreme poverty and may have unintended effects on child labor.

Sociologists are generally in agreement that the closing decades of the twentieth century involved striking changes in the landscape against which British young people grew up. Transformations in education and the labour market had the potential to dramatically alter and re-shape patterns of social inequality. This thesis addresses the importance of family effects upon educational attainment, early career prospects and, in turn, the post-16 trajectories of young adults against the contextual changes of this period. Recently, youth researchers have been keen to argue that we are continuing to progress towards a ‘post-modern era’, which centres on the ‘individualisation’ or ‘detraditionalisation’ arguments of Beck and Giddens; where structural factors, such as gender and social class are diminishing as the defining elements of the pathway a young person will take. In this study, the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), a contemporary source of longitudinal data from the early 1990s onwards, is used to demonstrate a lack of evidence of detraditionalisation, or the weakening of structural factors in determining the outcomes of young people. To the contrary, the gap between those from advantaged and less advantaged backgrounds remains wide. Furthermore, this research augments and extends previous studies of educational and early labour market outcomes by providing more comprehensive and integrated statistical analyses of household, family and parental effects, using techniques for longitudinal data analysis which give insight into patterns of social inequality being replicated in current contexts. Evidence using 17 years of longitudinal panel data indicate that, over time, family effects on school attainment and early labour market outcomes remain strong.