Young People in the Labour Market

Andy Furlong was Professor of Social Inclusion and Education and Dean for Research in the College of Social Science at the University of Glasgow, as well as Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne and Conjoint Professor at the University of Newcastle, Australia.John Goodwin is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Leicester.Henrietta O’Connor is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Leicester.Sarah Hadfield is a Researcher at the Institute of Mental Health, Nottingham. She worked as a Researcher at the University of Leicester when this book was formulated.Stuart Hall is a Senior Researcher in the Robert Owen Centre for Educational Change at the University of Glasgow.Kevin Lowden is a Senior Researcher in the Robert Owen Centre for Educational Change at the University of Glasgow.Réka Plugor works as a Researcher at the University of Leicester.

This pathbreaking book provides a way out of the conceptual and policy cul-de-sac on precarious work for young people, that has dominated research and policy formation. Driven by the question 'how did precarious work come to be the "new normal" for young people?', the authors trace changing working conditions in the UK, Denmark and Germany from the mid-1970s. This ‘long view’ exposes the suffering inflicted on young people by successive government policies and sets a new research and policy framework within which young people’s lives can be built. Johanna Wyn, Director of the Youth Research Centre, AustraliaSome of these authors have been holding the flame for youth studies for the last thirty years. Here, in a new must-read book analysing changes over that time, they show how vulnerable youth should no longer be regarded as a generation ‘lost’ to the labour market. Instead, they are now a ‘liminal’ generation in the labour market, caught betwixt and between by precarious employment.Chris Warhurst, Professor and Director of the Warwick Institute for Employment Research, Warwick University, UKAn ambitious contribution that will shape how we understand the worlds of work of young people. From YOPs and YTSs in the 1980s to zero-hours contracts in the contemporary post-‘great recession’ UK marked by youth unemployment, underemployment and economic instability, Furlong et al. unpack the alternatives to long-term full-time employment that have been available to young people. Their empirically-grounded analysis of change, and continuities, in the labour market offers a critical engagement with the influential notion of ‘precariat’. They develop instead a new model, with three ‘zones of (in)security’, to provide a more nuanced theoretical approach to the diverse working lives of young people.Tracey Warren, Professor of Sociology, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, UK

• List of figuresList of tableThe authorsAcknowledgementsForewordLooking back in order to look forwardKen RobertsCh.1Understanding the changing youth labour marketCh.2From the ‘golden age’ to neo-liberalismCh.3The great transformation and the punitive turnCh.4Towards a new normality: Work and unemployment in contemporary BritainCh.5The age of liminalityCh.6Towards a post-liminal labour marketAfterwordIs it inevitable that young people have to carry these costs of social change?David N. AshtonAppendix IReferences