eight - Activation or alienation: youth unemployment within different European welfare communities

Summary

Introduction

What we would like to explore in this chapter is the possibility of discussing political behaviour among young unemployed people within the framework of theories of welfare, citizenship and trust. The argument for this discussion is based on four different explanatory perspectives often used within research on youth unemployment. One perspective explores unemployment as a statistical phenomenon. Within this context young people's political views, attitudes and actions are mainly understood on the basis of the numbers of unemployed and the duration of unemployment. The second sort of explanation focuses on young people's life situation, putting the emphasis on the influence gender, age and social class have on political attitudes and activity. Third, explanations dealing with welfare states put emphasis on the role different welfare arrangements have in shaping different life situations among unemployed people and how different possibilities within the welfare system then create different attitudes and political behaviour. Finally, the risk agenda deals with how people's awareness and feelings of distrust in political structures generate new political attitudes and new ways of expressing them.

The main questions we would like to discuss in relations to these different explanatory frameworks are:

• • What type of political channels do young people use?

• • Do young unemployed people have a feeling of trust in the political system?

• • Do they trust the traditional political channels for exercising political influence or not?

Dataset and methods

To discuss these questions further, we will use a dataset from a study carried out in 10 different European countries. Marginalisation was the leading concept in the study, and the aim was to study the degree to which different labour market positions correlate with other social circumstances in the lives of young people (further details concerning the study can be found in Hammer, 2003b). The study was carried out in three major steps, in the Nordic countries in 1996, Scotland in 1997/98 (together with Ireland, which is not included in the discussion here) and in 1999/2000 in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. In all countries a representative sample was drawn from national unemployment registers. The study was based on young people who had experienced three months’ continuous unemployment and explored what had happened to them six to 12 months thereafter.