What is the significance of regulations of job contracts and wages when it comes to young people's access to labour market? This is an issue that has attracted and continues to attract a great deal of interest in both research and politics. Proposals for deregulated employment protection and reduced entry-level pay recur regularly in public…

The combination of work and study has been hailed as crucial to ensure that youth develop the skills required on the labour market so that transitions from school to work are shorter and smoother. This paper fills an important gap in availability of internationally-comparable data. Using the 2012 Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), it draws a…

Education is often seen as the most important mobility channel for children of immigrants. To what extent is this true? In this article, we look at successful second generation Turkish professionals in Sweden, France, Germany and The Netherlands. What kind of pathways did they take to become a professional? Based on the large quantitative…

To reduce high unemployment among their young people, countries are looking to others for help. During the economic downturn, some countries have performed better and youth unemployment has remained relatively low, for example in Germany, the Netherlands and Austria. This has been attributed in part to their apprenticeships or "dual'"…

The article explores the major features of the Swedish Government's new initiative--a school based Upper Secondary Apprenticeship model. The analyses are guided by activity theory. The analysed texts are part of the parliamentary reform-making process of the 2011 Upper Secondary School reform. The analyses unfold how the Government, the Swedish…

Understanding today's Vocational Education and Training (VET) systems requires a comprehension of the rise and development, i.e. of the foundations of topical VET. This book provides a comparative view of its development in Europe. The contributions of renowned authors give insight into conceptual questions, cases, and challenges in this field.

This article describes and analyses some crucial aspects in the latest reforms of Swedish upper secondary education. For decades Sweden stood out as a special case in several respects, in particular the integration of different tracks in upper secondary education; offering second chances to dropouts, and success in terms of equality and…

This article analyses reforms addressing and affecting the curriculum and organisation of Swedish upper secondary education over 40 years, up to an initiative by the present non-socialist government. The aim is to analyse the current reform of upper secondary education and relate it to previous reforms during a 40-year period in terms of…