Youth Transitions to Employment in a Context of Poverty and Insecurity Professor Tracy Shildrick University of

3 studies about young adults (2000, 2004, 2005)  What is it like to grow up in some of Britain’s poorest neighbourhoods?  Are young people really becoming cut off from the economic, social & moral mainstream – part of a socially excluded, disconnected underclass?  How can we best understand & respond to the social problems said to affect/ be caused by young people? e.g. educational underachievement, youth crime, drug use, early parenthood, youth unemployment/ NEET  Funded by Joseph Rowntree Foundation & Economic and Social Research Council ( links to research on last slide )

Research Methods  In-depth - lengthy, detailed, biographical, qualitative interviews [ also interviewed ‘stakeholders’, professionals who work with young people/ communities] also informal ‘participant observation’  Extensive 186 ‘hard to reach’ young people (aged 15-25) from very deprived wards in Teesside (in England)  Broad-ranging education & labour market housing, neighbourhood & family leisure, crime & drug use  Long-term/longitudinal – 1998 to 2010 Following some of the same young people into their 30s

2 studies of older age groups … more focus on poverty & worklessness  Low-pay, No-pay: Understanding Recurrent Poverty (2010)  How/ why people (60, aged yrs) are trapped in cycle of churning between low-paid jobs & unemployment, over years  Intergenerational Cultures of Worklessness? (2012)  Do we have places where 3 generations of family have never worked? What inter-generational processes shape poverty & unemployment? (20 families in Teesside & Glasgow)

Teesside -‘A policy laboratory’? ‘A research laboratory’? Not really, but…  From the ‘youngest child of England’s enterprise’, fastest growing town in England in 19 th century, through full employment, 3 rd most ‘prosperous’ UK sub-region in ’60s & ‘70s  …to one of poorest &‘most deindustrialised locales in the UK’ in 1990s/ 2000s.  Scale & depth of socio-economic change is unique? Generating serious social challenges.  Can’t understand the latter without understanding the former

School…a depressingly familiar story  ‘ Disappointment’ - disaffection - disengagement  Underachieving pupils in underachieving schools ‘Our school didn’t really do much homework or nothing, I found. I dunno, there was no encouragement there, I didn’t feel there was anyway…Well, I dunno, maybe if, I dunno…I was in lower sets than a lot of people so I’d just, I think maybe under that mark, there didn’t seem there was enough encouragement…’ (Anthony, 23 years)  BUT disappointing experiences of school did not set in stone negative attitudes: later re-engagement with education/ training - 2 nd, 3 rd, 4 th chances (sometimes helping to improve job prospects)

Post-school transitions  Unemployment = common & recurrent for all…  …but so was employment  Long-term post-school transitions, into 30s = insecure & non-progressive age 16-18: School-youth training- unemployment-/ age 18-26: job unemployment-FE -unemployment-New Deal…/ age : unemployment-job- unemployment-job-unemployment...  Not labour market exclusion (or idle underclass) - but long-term churning underemployment & economic marginality

Long-term, precarious transitions  Doing the same ‘poor work’ at age 17 & 27 & 37 years  Same pattern amongst older workers in 40s and 50s – not just a problem for young adults  Low-paid, low-skilled, insecure jobs = not stepping stones to something better  Insecurity of employment = prime driver of ‘low-pay, no-pay cycle’ (conclusion of other national studies too) i.e. people left/ lost jobs involuntarily.

The ‘low-pay, no-pay’ cycle

‘Low-pay, no-pay’ insecurity: Richard (30, currently unemployed)… ‘Just jumping from job to job it’s no way to go. It’s a nightmare! Jack of all trades, master of none (laughs). I just want something with a bit of job security - where maybes I can buy me own house in the future rather than just where you’ve got to be on a wing and a prayer type thing… just a job that I can call me own, you know what I mean? Rather than just looking for one all the time or just jumping from job to job’. Since age 16:  15 episodes of unemployment  5 training schemes  9 jobs (longest 18 months), now via emp. agencies  highest pay £7.50 ph, usually £5.50 ph.

Unemployment is not ‘a life-style choice’  c.250 interviews in Teesside  Not a ‘culture of worklessness’ – but a resilient culture of work, in context where opportunities for sustained employment drastically reduced  Thus repeated engagement in low paid, insecure jobs strong stigma about being ‘dole wallah’ & demonisation of/ mythologies about others on benefits

Work motivation & ‘poor work’  Jobs were: Low-paid (typically NMW) Low-skilled (no qualifications required bar being physically capable, ‘right attitude’; routinised but physically/ mentally stressful work) Insecure (temporary contracts + redundancy mainly, also dismissals, quitting)  Casualised work at the bottom of the labour market (but economically & socially necessary)  Yet people stressed the value of this work to them (for their self-esteem, social reasons, health, if not financial benefits)

Hard labour Not being paid properly for hours’ work done; Being required to do extra hours at very short notice (often with the threat of dismissal if they did not) Being required to undertake tasks that seemed unreasonable and outside of their normal role; Of the refusal of requests to leave work early or take time off for family reasons (e.g. because a child was sick); Losing maternity allowances because of employers’ bureaucratic errors; Being sacked for taking a day’s sick leave, and so on.

Not being a ‘dole wallah’ Malcolm, 19, no qualifications, unemployed, ex-burglar, ex- drug user, father: ‘I would hate being on the dole…I won’t do it. It’s embarrassing going to the Post Office with your giro. You just become lazy, have a lazy life… I just don’t wanna sign on the dole. I wanna work…It’s a weekly wage for a start, instead of a daft £78 per fortnight. It’s just part of life. To have a job and support your family. So instead of him [his son] growing up and when his friends’ Mams or teachers say ‘what does your Dad do?’ ‘Oh, he’s on the dole’. I don’t want none of that. I want him to grow up and say ‘Oh, our Dad’s working at summat’. So he can feel proud and have nice things when he gets older’.

Benefits – and jobs – linked to poverty  Everyday hardship & struggle of churning between low paid work and welfare: people unable to clothe, feed themselves/ family properly or keep homes warm.  Jobs did not take people far enough away from poverty for long enough to make a real difference to their lives  Taking jobs could in itself lead to worsening financial situations and debt

The ‘benefits trap’ or the benefits gap? ‘We were borrowing money off family and living off my family allowance which doesn’t even cover the gas and electric. So we were borrowing money off family and getting loans off people coming to the door just to keep us. In the end we went to them and said, 'we need some help'. We should really have been entitled to a crisis loan but they said we weren't entitled so we had to claim a budgeting loan where you have to pay it back. They took so long! They are just not bothered there's a family there with no money or any type of income’ (Mary, 30).

Causes of low-pay, no-pay cycle  ‘Employability’ a two- sided concept: ‘supply’ & ‘demand-side’  Demand-side – i.e. the impoverishment of employment opportunities (labour market casualisation & insecurity)  = prime cause of low- pay, no-pay cycle

Causes of low-pay, no-pay cycle  BUT, supply-side factors, associated with the multiple disadvantages of deprived neighbourhoods also had effects e.g. costs, inflexibility of child-care on mother’s work histories e.g. ill-health a barrier to jobs  Demand & supply-side factors intertwined in work histories e.g. because jobs often demanded unsocial hours it was difficult to find appropriate child care e.g. ‘poor work’ & unemployment both caused ill-health – which then restricted employment options

Conclusions: what has happened here?  Teesside, these neighbourhoods, built for industry - & industrial workers & families; success, security, prosperity  But our younger interviewees born on the cusp/ in the depths of accelerated global-local economic change (between 1974 & mid-80s)  De-industrialisation shifted economic crisis onto individual life histories, scrapping traditional routes to adulthood & secure forms of working class life  People now ‘get by’ via friends & family & churning poor work

The future?  Slow economic recovery + public sector job cuts + public service cuts + more welfare cuts = worsening of social conditions & economic prospects of our interviewees  BUT low-skilled, insecure jobs an increasing part of UK labour market (despite talk of a high-skills economy)  Low-pay, no-pay cycle evident for interviewees across better & worse phases of national economy

References to Teesside Studies  Johnston, L., MacDonald, R., Mason, P., Ridley, L., and Webster, C. et al. (2000) Snakes & Ladders, York: JRF.   Webster, C., Simpson, D., MacDonald, R., Abbas, A., Cieslik, M., Shildrick, T., and Simpson, M. (2004) Poor Transitions, Bristol: Policy Press/JRF.   MacDonald, R., & Marsh, J. (2005) Disconnected Youth? Growing up in Britain’s Poor Neighbourhoods, Palgrave.  Neighbourhoods/dp/ Neighbourhoods/dp/  Shildrick, T., MacDonald, R., Webster, C. and Garthwaite, K. (2010) The Low-pay, no-pay Cycle: understanding recurrent poverty, York: JRF.   Shildrick, T., MacDonald, R., Furlong, A., Roden, J., and Crow, R. (2012, forthcoming) Intergenerational Cultures of Worklessness: Popular Myth or Miserable Reality?, York: JRF. 