Youth Transitions, VET and the ‘Making’ of Class: A European Perspective ECER Annual Conference 2015 Corvinus University, Budapest James Avis & Liz Atkins

Early and Contemporary Analyses There are consistent differences between the career paths of young people from different backgrounds in many societies (Hodkinson et al, 1996:7) The current neoliberal mutation of capitalism has evolved beyond the days when the wholesale exploitation of labor under-wrote the world system’s expansion. While “normal” business profits plummet and theft-by-finance- rises, capitalism now shifts into a mode of elimination that targets most of us – along with our environment – as waste products awaiting managed disposal (Blackler, 2013, p1)

Policy and Materiality [Policymakers] ascribe an importance to skills that many employers do not (Keep and James, 2010). Building the right skills can help countries improve economic prosperity and social cohesion... by contributing to social outcomes such as health, civil and social engagement, by supporting improvement in productivity and growth, by supporting high levels of employment in good quality jobs (OECD, 2014). The skills profile and hence the supply and cost of some skills, may never be ideal in the UK, but labour market flexibility will remain our real competitive advantage (Confederation of British Industry, 2009: 20).

Exchange Values the wage returns to many lower level vocational qualifications ( VQs), especially NVQs, are often low (sometimes very low) and uncertain (Keep, 2009a; Keep and James, 2010; Keep 2014). This system [co-determination] has now come under stress from a number of sources: the inevitable growth of the service sector, which is less suitable for this style of governance and whose lower wages tend to discourage the supply of labor; a gradual weakening of union power and a tendency to shift collective bargaining from the national to the local level; intensified competition, especially from Eastern Europe, including the easy possibility of outsourcing and after accession to the European Union, the importing of very low paid “posted” workers working according to their home country rule and a general waning of belief in corporatist ideas. (Solow, 2013, p13-14) Solow, R., (2008) The German story, in Bosch, G., Weinkopf, C. (eds) Low-wage work in Germany, New York, The Russell Sage foundation

Performocracy [We live] in a world of unemployment and under-employment, and with an accumulation of evidence that suggests that over-qualification and the under-utilisation of skill is now a major problem (Keep, 2014, citing OECD, 2013; Green et al, 2013) [This is] what Brown refers to as ‘performocracy’ which draws on notions of individualism, individual failure and a competitive labour market. ‘Performocracy’ can therefore justify not only the unemployment of working class youth but also the over-qualification, un- and underemployment of middle class youth, which under neo-liberalism is construed as a result of the inability to compete effectively in a competitive market place where winners take all.

Youth unemployment in comparison to overall unemployment (Eurostat, online) June 2015 Geographic regionYouth Unemployment Total working population unemployment Germany7.1%4.7% England14.4%5.7% Euro area22.5%11.1% Greece53.2%25.6%

Early Analyses Emphasise the primacy of class in analyses of VET and class and labour (re) production Structure and agency, as well as Bourdieusian concepts of capital, field, and habitus Intermittent employment and casualization Infantilization and extended transitions

Contemporary Analyses Emphasise Increased precariousness of the labour market and the impact of ‘performocracy’ Significance of fractured and extended transitions Structural changes in class and labour market structure

Continuities and Discontinuities Despite increased access to education mental/manual divisions remain important as do those of class, race and gender. Deficit model of youth remains well embedded in policy discourse, but over time there is a developing emphasis on a model of youth as a (human capital) resource. These policy models are significant in terms of the degree of polarisation between the two. Extended transitions Precariousness has become a critical aspect of labour for both working class and middle class youth, making progressive construction of a career more challenging