Mobilization by the unemployed has traditionally been considered a highly improbable phenomenon. However, recent observations challenge such a supposition. Our article compares protest waves in France, Germany, and Italy, where the unemployed successfully organized themselves and acted on their own behalf for several months. We argue that mobilization of the unemployed-although it empirically proved to be a possibility-remains very fragile, particularly depending on beneficial "windows of opportunities." Our analysis is above all interested in deciphering macrostructural conditions and opportunity structures, arguing that the unemployed benefited from external developments causing changes in potential mobilizing resources, and brought about new allies and political entrepreneurs. At the same time, however, these opportunity structures were actively exploited and, at the same time, their opening was fostered by the mobilization itself.

This article outlines the evolution of youth European policies, in a context marked for over 25 years by a very high level of youth unemployment, exacerbated since 2008 by the economic crisis. It is striking that the European Union (EU) has until recently preferred a transversal approach to youth, considering youth unemployment as an issue among others. Moreover, the difficulty of the EU to co‐operate with a wide spectrum of youth organizations is obvious, especially with those in favour of a far more protective approach against youth employment. However, we seem to witness the rise of a corporatist system in the field of youth, in which a few organizations are considered as legitimate interlocutors, even if they are consulted on issues which are the less sensitive at the expense of youth unemployment policies.

No abstract

Mobilization by the unemployed has traditionally been considered a highly improbable phenomenon. However, recent observations challenge such a supposition. Our article compares protest waves in France, Germany, and Italy, where the unemployed successfully organized themselves and acted on their own behalf for several months. We argue that mobilization of the unemployed—although it empirically proved to be a possibility—remains very fragile, particularly depending on beneficial "windows of opportunities." Our analysis is above all interested in deciphering macrostructural conditions and opportunity structures, arguing that the unemployed benefited from external developments causing changes in potential mobilizing resources, and brought about new allies and political entrepreneurs. At the same time, however, these opportunity structures were actively exploited and, at the same time, their opening was fostered by the mobilization itself.

No abstract