Barriers That Keep Vulnerable People as NEETs

Abstract

The rates of young people Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) in the Mediterranean European Economic Area (MED EEA) are high. Hence, the European Union and national governments have developed and implemented different policies aimed to tackle the NEET situation. In this article, we try to identify and understand the most relevant barriers that keep vulnerable people as NEETs. We focused on youth as being at the highest risk of becoming NEETs: migrant women aged 25–29. By using semi-structured interviews and focus groups with key stakeholders and NEETs in the Spanish region of Murcia, we collected their views on and experiences with different programs and strategies. We conclude that this group is exposed to additional barriers due to the intersectionality of their characteristics. There are structural and contextual aspects, such as motherhood, a lack of social networks, or not knowing the language, which NEET policies do not address. We highlight the need of (i) improving the adaptiveness of relevant policies by being tailored to specific problems NEETs face, (ii) expanding the focus of NEET policies, and (iii) including the regional perspective in NEET policy design. In our comprehensive approach, we stress that the NEET policy alone cannot solve the NEET problem.

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“…Specifically, the results obtained in the qualitative study developed from the implementation of twenty-nine in-depth interviews with young be a key condition when accessing the labor market, with the gap that exists in labor market insertion between natives and immigrants being evident (Berthoud 2000;Heath and Cheung 2007). This is caused, in a way, by the socially held concept of a "migrant" (Brahic and Lallement 2020;Pesquera et al 2022), which represents a structural disadvantage that they must face (Fellini and Guetto 2019).…”

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