Observatory of Childhood, Youth and Youth Foster Care

Hardship and End of the Tunnel

Luxembourg, 9th and 10th july 2015

Tackling early school leaving and promoting success in school

Michel Vandekeere

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Plan

• Hardship: What can be learned from listening to NEET’s? Method Lessons Recommendations

• End of the tunnel: Unlikely Routes Method Objectives Lessons Recommendations

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What can be learned from listening to NEET’s? Method (1)

• Starting from the point of view of young people concerned• The most vulnerable young people: disengaged / discouraged• Reality as they experience it and reality as other people see it:

testimonies• Objective: to better understand ...• ... initial circumstances, routes, coping strategies, social

resources - interpersonal and institutional -, network, meaning, activities

• Identify the factors that increase or otherwise neutralize vulnerabilities

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What can be learned from listening to NEET’s? Method (2)

• Participatory qualitative survey• Mixed sample• 31 young people aged 18 to 30 years• Neither in employment, education or training• For at least one year• Interviewed between February 15 and June 28, 2013• By a not-for-profit organization (RTA, Namur)

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What can be learned from listening to NEET’s? Lessons (1)

• Young people met are not "disabled" but over-occupied by the necessities of survival(-> Extract)

• They suffer lasting disrepute because of the dominant representations: stigmatisation

• They struggle against the effects of disaffiliation and de-subjectivation (formatted rather than trained)

• The difficulties of integration and inclusion alternate, mutually reinforcing each other with cumulative effects

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Unoccupied?

• "It's running all the time, all the time; I always have to go introduce myself, do that; and next to that, I have FOREM (employment agency). At first I had the municipality, health insurance ... And when you have to go from left to right, they, they think we will not come ... But we on the one hand, we also have our life, one also has things to do. It's like the district officer: I had to see for my furniture, I had to see the CPAS (social services agency), I had to go to FOREM, to health insurance agency, to the municipality; then the district officer I missed him and what happened is that, finally, he believed that I did not live there, so when he came, he was a bit .. . it was a bit there .... They believe that we are all the time available to them. We also have a life beside. " Manu

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What can be learned from listening to NEET’s? Lessons (2)

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What can be learned from listening to NEET’s? Lessons (3)

• Position 1: integration +/inclusion +• Position 2: integration -/ inclusion +• Position 3: integration +/ inclusion -: vulnerability• Position 4: integration -/ inclusion -: disaffiliation (loss of rights)• Process oriented analysis : better able to account for very

busy « inactivity »

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What can be learned from listening to NEET’s? Lessons (4)

Aggravating factors: Logic of optimal activation: inadequate Symbolic violence: degradation of self-image,

contamination, disruption of the subject with his actions, alienating effects ...

• Alternative Intervention Model for professionals• Changes to structural policies: badly needed

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What can be learned from listening to NEET’s? Recommandations (1)

• The singularity of situations requires proper individualized help: to listen to and build custom solutions

• Recognize and take into account the activity of NEETs• Recognize and support social inclusion efforts of

young people who go through other channels than work or training in the formal system

• Basic support: access to housing, income

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What can be learned from listening to NEET’s? Recommandations (2)

• Provide actors (including in schools) with adequate tools for “empowering” young people and make them more familiar with their rights and the rules prevailing in the institutions, including those of employment assistance

• Promote links between the various help and assistance agencies

• Support lifelong learning associations (multidimensional accompaniment)

• Challenge the overall ideology of the activation policy

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Unlikely Routes?

• Trajectory correction• Survivors of (social) fate • Unlikely routes• (significant) positive inflections• • ... and "supporting devices"

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Unlikely Routes: Which Youth?

• N = 30• [19-30 years]• Supported by various "devices" in three “sectors/areas”:

• Extracurricular (School Persistence Services, Help Center to access to higher education, Alternate Learning Centres...)

• Socio-professional integration (On-the-job Training Enterprises, accompaniment by Public Centres for Social Welfare, ...)

• Socio-cultural (Youth Centers, Open Educational Support, Youth Organizations ...)

• Interviewed by researchers in sociology (Girsef-UCL)

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Unlikely routes: Method

• Identification via relays people in the three types of support devices

• Life stories: retrospective survey• Analysis:

• Tension between subjective and objective dimension: ex. : Speech of individual merit versus luck factor

• Importance of the temporal dimension (tracking, process): ex. : Typical configuration "biographical parenthesis promoting reflexivity"

• Joints and overlap between spheres of life (school, family, professional, ...): ex. : Reconstruction of the network of friends

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Unlikely Routes: Strengths and limitations

• The own view of the interested parties (youth)• ... invited to look back• Experience lived, but written into singular social

constraints• Who should not be taken for ...• .... A diagnosis of the devices which supported them

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Unlikely Routes: Objectives

• Identify the levers that contributed to a significant positive change in trajectory

• Make assumptions about the success factors and success conditions of supporting “devices”

• Imagine ways for disseminating such testimonies to professionals and young people.

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Unlikely Routes: What we learned?

• Plurality of routes and of experiences through the supporting devices

• Plurality of levers on which young people can build: hence sometimes unexpected effects

• Young people tend to individualize (even psychologize) success factors:• Individual or interpersonal frame of reference rather than a collective

or political one• Motivation, work on oneself, supportive entourage ...• Relations with other beneficiaries of the device: less important to

young people (but variable according to type device)• Reflection of the prevailing representation of the contemporary

individual: sovereign individual, who believes to be the author of his own life (Ehrenberg).

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Unlikely Routes: Three Logics of Action

• Integration logic: social norms, at school or at work: relation to work, punctuality, responsibility

• Strategic Resource Acquisition Logic: professional experience, academic capital, useful skills, specific or crosscutting, useful relationships (social capital), information about the functioning of public institutions (wellfare assistance, employment agency, social housing ...), the educational system or the work market

• Subjectivation Logic: self-confidence, self-image (correction of the previous negative image), working on oneself (better knowing oneself, finding out what one likes, what one wants to do, taking stock, failure mourning process, exploring one’s potential,…), opening oneself, discovering another world than the family or the neighborhood, self-expression

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Unlikely Routes: Three Typical Configurations (1)

• Substitute to family Effect: secure and stable environment Effect: severing of family ties Effect (paradoxical): dependance, difficulty to cut ties

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Unlikely Routes: Three Typical Configurations (2)

• Biographical Parenthesis Promoting Reflexivity Effect: self-confidence: break the grip of stigma Effect: renegotiating and sieving prior social ties Effect: taking responsibility Effect: shift (concrete testing of new latent preferences) Effect of the trip as a resource for independence (ie being

capable of)

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Unlikely Routes: Three Typical Configurations (3)

• Equip to Fill a Gap or Alleviate a Failure Effect: taking charge of a specific problem (repair of a

biographical fault) Effect: dedramatization Rebound effect (temporary fault)

• • & Hybrid Configurations: Alternate Learning Centres, School Persistence Services, Training Centers, Housing support...

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Unlikely Routes: Levers (1)

• Trigger event that initiates or activates a de-centering from oneself (hammer blow on the head) Take charge of one’s own life and take control Mirror effect: awareness of one’s own passivity Switch to adulthood

• The chance, luck• The importance of the state of mind on arrival in the

device (alignment between supply and demand)• Charisma and moral authority of social workers

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Unlikely Routes: Levers (2)

• Key role of others: social workers, the peer group, the entourage of young people

• Protected confrontation to real life scenarios• One rarely changes things only for oneself but for

others: to prove something, to prove them wrong, that they be proud of us

• Self-constrain: act according to what they have learned to value and consider as important

• Having objective integration chances• Adhere to the meritocratic ideology?

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Unlikely Routes: Recommendations

• Motivation: a pseudo-lever• Identify what helps create and maintain motivation: ie

experiment a success in a protected area• Promote the presence of the three logics in each

device• The relational competence, a key asset• Reaching young people who could benefit from some

devices but are not yet involved• Question: How to put the young in capacity to solicit

and accept the intervention of a device?

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NEETs & Unlikely Routes : Next

• To find out more:• Qu’ont à nous apprendre les NEET’s?• http://www.oejaj.cfwb.be/index.php?id=11412 • Parcours improbables: trente jeunes témoignent• http://www.oejaj.cfwb.be/index.php?id=10248• Valorisation vidéo des parcours improbables:• http://www.oejaj.cfwb.be/index.php?id=12371• Ongoing Research:• Le non-recours aux droits et aux services d’éducation et de

formation des jeunes âgés de 15 à 24 ans en Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles : réalités et leviers