Transitions From Education To Work In Europe

Bringing together contributions from international scholars, this book explores the changing nature of young people's transitions and challenges assumptions about pathways from education into employment in contemporary society.

This text provides a comparative analysis of school-to-work transitions in EU member states. It shows how differences in both European education and training systems, as well as labour market institutions, generated significant variation in the experiences of young people in the 1990s.

After the breakdown of socialism in Central and Eastern Europe, the role of education systems in preparing students for the "real world" changed. Though young people were freed from coercive state institutions, the shift to capitalism made the transition from school to work much more precarious and increased inequality in early career outcomes. This volume provides the first large-scale analysis of the impact social transformation has had on young people in their transition from school to work in Central and Eastern European countries. Written by local experts, the book examines the process for those entering the workforce under socialism, during the turbulent transformation years, in the early 2000s, and today. It considers both the risks and opportunities that have emerged, and reveals how they are distributed across social groups. Only by studying these changes can we better understand the long-term impact of socialism and post-socialist transformation on the problems young people in this part of the world are facing today.

"This book provides valuable insights into young people's transitions to work in modern societies, and into the (in)adequacies of policies intended to support these transitions. With its main objects, to develop a more qualitative, holistic approach to young people's transitions and to bridge the gap between transition research and policy, the book raises challenging issues for social scientists and policy makers." -- BACK COVER.

This collaborative study provides a subtle and multi-layered understanding of the transition to parenthood within a cross-national comparative framework.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. Incisive and forward-thinking in its approach, this prescient book investigates the conditions of the often unstable school-to-work transition (SWT) period, calling for an improvement in labour market entry processes in order to facilitate the smooth integration of school leavers into employment. It captures the complex nature of SWTs by proposing and evaluating a new set of metrics which can act as a composite indicator of early employment security.

The national and European-level studies of the factors that ensure the success of young people's vocational integration and that offer protection against unemployment were reviewed. The research established that, in most national statistical reports, information on the occupational progress of school-leavers and those emerging from initial training was sparse. It was concluded that, although national statistics and surveys could be used to supplement and explain some of the findings of European surveys, any attempts to use national statistics gathered in the various European countries for purposes of comparison should proceed with caution. Networks currently working in the field of transition at the European level were encouraged to publish their data so as to optimize the use of research work. It was further recommended that the process of conducting comparative studies of the factors ensuring successful transition from the educational system into the labor market begin with prioritization of the large number of themes currently being tackled in national publications. (The report contains 149 references. Appended is a discussion of young people's entry into the labor market that is based on indicators published in selected recent national publications from 16 European countries.) (MN)