Job creation remains a critical challenge for South Africa. Despite strong achievements in macro-economic stability and increases in employment, the growing labour force has outstripped the capacity of the labour market to absorb young people. The state of the country’s skills base, rendered inadequate by the legacy of apartheid, contributes to sustained inequalities in the labour market. This impacts on the capacity of the economy to grow in an increasingly competitive global environment. In this context, Vocational Education and Training (VET) is viewed as an important mechanism for building the necessary intermediate technical skills to support key sectors of the economy. However, international experience demonstrates that expanding the VET system and developing human capital more broadly will not in itself lead to increased job creation. The alignment of skills supply and demand can only be achieved through a well-developed understanding of the factors that support or inhibit the transition of young people into the labour market. This study investigates these factors through the lens of social capital theory. Through tracing 1,532 individuals who graduated from FET Colleges in the Gauteng province in 1999, the study interrogates the role of bonding and bridging social capital in supporting the transition into colleges and from colleges into the labour market. The findings show support for the three hypotheses: 1) Poor socio-economic family contexts appear to offer little information from which to make effective educational choices. Young people generally make such choices on the basis of perceived long-term value of post-school education rather than short-term economic considerations. 2) FET colleges are ineffective agents of bridging social capital and therefore have limited impact on the rate of employment, in particular the rate of relevant employment. 3) Personal networks are critical, but in impoverished environments are ineffective for finding meaningful employment on initial entry into the labour market. Therefore, restricted social networks have the potential to further entrench social inequality. The study contributes to a greater understanding of the challenges facing youth in navigating through the transition from school to work and the implications for FET policy in pressurising colleges to create access to effective social networks for their students and thereby meaningfully contribute to job creation.

School-to-work (STW) transitions have become more protracted over recent decades, with increased risks of unemployment and social exclusion for young people. Moreover, young people are expected to plan their own career and enhance their employa­bility, although gender and social and cultural background still significantly influence employment prospects. Policies have been developed in an attempt to facilitate young people’s pathways into work. However, STW-transitions are one of the weakest poin­ts in Swedish welfare system; in addition the quality of career guidance has been questioned. This dissertation aims to describe and analyse young adults STW-transitions from a biographical perspective. It is based around life story interviews with 52 unem­ployed young adults’, 25-29 years old, including men and women with varying educa­tional backgrounds, living in three different Swedish local contexts. Four research questions are examined: How do the young adults’ describe their STW-transitions in retrospect? What characterized their horizons of actions at the time of the interview? What is the impact of public career guidance? How did ethnicity, gender and locality affect answers to the above questions - and how may such differences be interpreted? The analysis of the young adults’ narratives was based on the careership theory devel­oped by Hodkinson and Sparkes. In retrospect the young adults described their STW-transitions as an attempt to find and achieve personal goals. They emphasized turning points, i.e. when educa­tion or a job begins or ends, but also highlighted experiences when studying or working that make them realize what they wanted or what they would not accept. Four transition patterns, partly connected to gender and locality, were identified among the respondents: yo-yoing between workplaces, education and unemploy­ment; mainly working; mainly in education; or mainly excluded from work and education. These patterns involved varying experiences, current situations and future expectations. At the time of the interview the young adults’ horizon of action involved interrelated aspects of life, but getting a stable job and settling down was pivotal to most of them. The strategies of the interviewees for navigating between dreams and reality diverged. However, they shared an ambition “to put one’s talents to good use” and feared not being able to do so. Experiences of career guidance were generally reported to have been sporadic and meaningless. However, in some cases, inter­ventions are influential for example, when choosing an upper secondary school or during times of unemployment. The young adults’ employed various strategies when interventions adversely affected their goals; of these “to managing by one’s self” was the most common. In addition, guidance varied according to ethnicity and local structures. It is concluded that STW-transitions are challenging journeys, mainly undertaken without professional support, which the young adults perceived as uncertain. / Individen, vägarna, valen. Karriärval och vägledning i socialt, mångkulturellt och könsperspektiv

Dans cette thèse, les déterminants des trajectoires éducationnelles et professionnelles des jeunes dans les pays en développement sont examinés, avec un accent particulier mis sur les relations au sein du ménage. Le premier chapitre fournit une revue des contributions théoriques et empiriques de la littérature autour du concept de transition de l'éducation au marché du travail dans les pays en voie de développement. Le deuxième chapitre développe un modèle d'équilibre général calculable, appliqué de manière rétrospective à l'économie de la Malaisie, dans l'optique d'étudier les conséquences sur le marché du travail du progrès technique biaisé et d'une politique éducative de masse. Les chapitres suivants s'interrogent sur les interactions au sein des ménages et leurs impacts lors de chocs. Un accent est ici mis sur le travail des enfants ainsi que sur leur scolarisation. Les résultats soulignent d’importantes externalités et une absorption hétérogène des chocs au niveau des ménages. L'évaluation de politiques publiques gagnerait à tenir compte de ces externalités intra-ménage. / This thesis seeks to promote our understanding of the constraints and opportunities facing youth as they transit through schooling and to the labor market. The first chapter provides a literature review of the theoretical and empirical contributions to what we know about school-to-work transitions in developing countries and their specificities. The following chapter builds a computable general equilibrium model that is applied to the Malaysian labor market, in order to study the impact of skill-biased technological change and educational policy on labor market evolutions. Subsequent chapters examine household interactions arising from exogenous shocks, from the angle of children’s work and schooling. The findings from these chapters point to the presence of important spillover effects and heterogeneous absorption of shocks in the household. Impact evaluation of policy would therefore benefit from the systematic incorporation of such household-level externalities.

The study is an investigation into the pathways of out-of-school youth and their re-entrance into the Education Training and Development (ETD) system or the labour market. In the study the pathways of youth who dropped out of school between grades 1 and 11 are traced as they seek re-entrance to the ETD system, or entrance into the labour market. Particular attention was given to the factors that determine the choices that dropouts make either in re-entering the ETD system or entering the labour market. An analysis of the experiences of the interviewed sample of dropouts is presented. The study employs a qualitative research methodology using interviews to elicit the experiences of dropouts and school managers. The participants (young people and three school principals) were selected through snowballing from a township south of Durban. Individual and focus group interviews were held. The findings provide evidence of the value of investing in education, as suggested by the youth. This is in line with the human capital theory framework that suggests that there are major benefits to investing in education. The study is concluded by suggesting the need for second chance education in South Africa. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Education Management and Policy Studies / unrestricted