Purpose: The purpose of this study is to improve understanding of the role of the family as NEET determinants in a country with free education in a Mediterranean or Southern European welfare state, so that the authors can contribute to policy recommendations and offer suggestions for future studies. Design/methodology/approach: The authors used…

The paper addresses the impact of COVID-19 on vocational education and training, seeking to discern the outline of possible directions for its future development within the debates about VET responses to the pandemic. The discussion is set in its socio-economic context, considering debates that engage with the social relations of care and…

Internationally, there has been growing interest in the experiences of care experienced youth and their engagements with activities that can support positive development. Despite the acknowledged potential of sport/physical activity (PA) to act as a vehicle for positive development, there remain concerns about the piecemeal nature of sport/PA…

Purpose: The paper seeks to disclose the features and implications of the neoliberal VET and employment policy agendas for the social and institutional VET ecosystems and the integration of at-risk youth in the labour market in the Baltic countries. Design/methodology/approach: The research is based on the comparative policy analysis approach with…

Background: Post-positivist critics of the linear-rational understanding of the role of knowledge in decision making have long argued the need for the construction of socially robust knowledge to illuminate policy problems from a variety of perspectives, including lived experiences. Aims and objectives: This article charts the attempts of…

Using the policy narrative framework, this article examines the pathways through which the development of policies (related to rural/small towns young NEETs in various EU countries) are based on evidence. To do this, we consider the Youth Guarantee (YG), an EU program (2014-2020) developed in several member countries with the aim of…

This article focuses on neoliberal governing by the European Union of cross-sectoral youth policies directed at young people 'at risk'. The aim is to show how the alliance of discourses of employability and precariousness in these policies has emerged and how these discourses operate in policy. In the article, we analyse European Council and…

This study aims to analyze South Korea's experience during the COVID-19 outbreak through a gendered lens. We briefly introduce the COVID-19 outbreak in Korea, scrutinize gendered vulnerability in contracting the virus, and then analyze the gendered aspects of the pandemic response in two phases: quarantine policy and mitigation policy. The authors…

There are 240 million children with disabilities in the world; half of them are out of school. Many are invisible, stigmatized, hidden by their families and abandoned by their governments. Children with disabilities, especially in humanitarian settings, are among the poorest members of the population and one of the most marginalized and excluded…

There is little evidence on the association between child and adolescent mental health (CAMH) policies and adolescent mental health. This study examined this association using data on indicators of adolescent mental health--aggressive behavior, life satisfaction, and psychosomatic symptoms--in 172,829 eleven- to fifteen-year-olds from 30 European…

Young adults, aged 18-30 years, are disproportionally mentioned in sexually transmissible infection surveillance data both in Australia and internationally. This contributes to categorising young adults as an 'at risk' group in health policy. How young adults are framed in policy, and what informs this, have direct implications for policy…

The establishment of the Central Observation Institute in Mol in 1913 marks the introduction of scientific expertise in Belgium's youth delinquency policy. The child at risk was subjected to a series of observations, resulting in an observation report ('waarnemingsverslag') that contained the psychological, moral and physical characteristics of…

Government advice in relation to 'countering violent extremism' (CVE) in English schools requires teachers to identify students 'at risk' of radicalisation whilst also encouraging them to facilitate open classroom discussions of controversial issues. Data collected in seven schools illustrate how teachers are responding to this advice and…

This series of briefs draws on the findings of multi-country research based on first-hand migration experiences of 1,634 children and young people moving between Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt1 (available at www.unicef-irc.org/child-migration-hoa). The briefs highlight findings that can inform decision makers when designing child-sensitive…

Since the 1980s, El Salvador has survived a 12-year civil war, two major earthquakes, devastating hurricanes, a massive drought, a famine, and now the current levels of violence related to gang presence across the country. Nearly everyone has had personal experience with at least one but more likely multiple traumatic experiences during their…