The “NEET” category from the perspective of inequalities: toward a typology of school-to-work transitions among youth from lower class neighborhoods in the Brussels region (Belgium)

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes a critical analysis of the NEET category. We argue that it is both too focused on individual responsibility and too homogenizing to enable the development of public policies and measures capable of responding to the needs of the most excluded youth. We respond to these needs using a qualitative approach that has allowed us to account for the diversity of young people, especially the most marginalized, living in lower-class neighborhoods of the Brussels region. Our approach generates a NEET/non-NEET typology that helps deconstruct NEET as a statistical category by identifying social situations that are both diverse and temporary. This typology challenges the tendency to reify young people and to hold them responsible for their own circumstances. Furthermore, our typology shows how NEET situations result from trajectories shaped by structural dynamics as well as relations and processes of inequality. These may stem from social class, experiences of migration, or the intersection of the two, and inevitably exercise an effect on both school and job market environments.

KEYWORDS:

• NEET
• youth
• lower class neighborhoods
• social and ethno-racial inequalities
• qualitative sociology

Acknowledgements

The results presented in this papers were collected and analysed with the support of the participate fund of INNOVIRIS. The authors would like to thank the colleagues and students who helped with the data collection. Particular thanks to Jonathon Repinecz for the translation work.

Declaration of interest statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 European Commission White Paper of 21 November 2001: “A new impetus for European youth [COM(2001) 681 final; not published in the Official Journal of the European Union].

2 We are currently developing this point in an article in progress.

3 Actiris is the name of the public service for seeking employment in the Brussels-Capital Region.

4 Uccle is one of the wealthiest neighborhoods of Brussels, while Molenbeek is one of the poorest with a high concentration of young people of foreign descent and as such highly stigmatized, even more so since the terrorist attacks of 2015 (Paris) and 2016 (Brussels). As to Jette it is a neighborhood that is currently going through a process of gentrification.

5 Jérôme is used here as the stereotypical name for a white, rich kid from a rich neighborhood.