Dear Colleagues,

For children everywhere, the passage to adulthood represents an exciting time, filled with promise. However, completing school can be a challenging life phase, especially for some categories of students. 

Moving from education to what should be productive and decent work opportunities that make effective use of the youth’s acquired skills, allowing professional and personal fulfillment, may be a difficult path. Obstacles come from different causes: firstly, the local and national realities—our global world is characterized by extraordinary inequalities among countries in terms of income and economic environment— shape the opportunities on offer. Secondly, class position, gender, ethnic origin and personal conditions (as for example disabilities) have a lasting impact on young people’s lives and labour market prospects.

The school-to-work process can be broken down into different moments. In the first place, the role of the education system must be considered. There again there are inequalities in school attendance by students and, of course, of the resources put into the processes of giving young people access to the knowledge, competencies, attitudes and qualifications that will allow them to find their place both in society and in an evolving economy. In particular the school-to-work transition can be prepared through various measures like on-the-job training, apprenticeships, cooperative education agreements or other programs designed to prepare students to enter the job market. The quality of these programs depend on resources.

Looking for international standards, the International Labour Office defines a successful transition to work as being when a young person is settled into stable employment. This is defined in turn as a job with an employment contract, written or verbal, lasting for 12 or more months or, for those who do not have long-term wage employment, a job with a self-perception of continuity [1]. As, in many countries, the majority of young people will be employed in the informal sector, they may not achieve this definition of stable employment.

This Special Issue aims to investigate different situations of transition from school to work for disadvantaged young people or those that are considered “at risk” owing to low-income environment, ethnicity, disabilities and learning difficulties, taking into account varied traits and learning experiences and articulating this with the countries’ different education models and economic structures. A “crisis” component will of course be taken into account (including the COVID-19 crisis, that was catastrophic for young people education and transition to work).

We suggest the use of the concept of intersectionality—class, race, gender—to understand how inequalities in the opportunities that are offered to young people during the transition school to work are reproduced and multiplied. Special attention should be given to school–work transition policies aimed at improving the employability of young populations that work in low-skilled occupations, especially after crisis situations. Gender inequalities and their influence on training, expectations and labor insertion should also be addressed.

Approaches may vary, with some focusing more on the school programs or others on the issue of employability. We insist on the importance of having experiences from the Global North—or the West—and South. We have already mentioned the issue of the informal economy, representing the only possibility for young people from lower classes. Articles that propose possible models for improving the situation are welcomed. Among the theoretical references for the call, we are inspired by Paulo Freire’s theory of popular education, an intellectual tradition of political pedagogy. The basic thrust of popular education, as Freire articulates it, is to “make oppression and its causes objects of reflection by the oppressed,” and by others who join with the oppressed in solidarity [2]. Freire argues that oppressed persons can and should act as full-fledged subjects in analyzing and transforming their conditions of subordination, in conjunction with other people who may not share their specific circumstances of oppression but who still are affected by widely encircling dynamics of domination. This experience also concerns the transition from school to work.

References

[1] https://ilostat.ilo.org/transition-from-school-to-work-remains-a-difficult-process-for-youth/. 

[2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0090591720985770#fn4-0090591720985770.

Prof. Dr. Giovanna Campani
Dr. Anderson Spavier Alves
Dr. Teresa Terrón-Caro
Guest Editors

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