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Young people and UK labour market policy: A critique of ‘employability’ as a tool for understanding youth unemployment

Author

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  • Richard Crisp

    (Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, Sheffield Hallam University, UK)

  • Ryan Powell

    (Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, Sheffield Hallam University, UK)

Abstract

This paper presents a critical analysis of the contemporary policy focus on promoting employability among young people in the UK. Drawing on analysis of UK policy approaches to tackling youth unemployment since the late 1970s, we suggest that existing critiques of employability as ‘supply-side orthodoxy’ fail to capture fully its evolving meaning and function. Under the UK Coalition Government, it became increasingly colonised as a targeted tool of urban governance to legitimise ever more punitive forms of conditional welfare. We argue that this colonisation undermines the value of the notion of employability as an academic tool for understanding the reasons why young people face difficulties in entering the labour market. The paper suggests that the notion of youth transitions offers more potential for understanding youth unemployment, and that more clearly linking this body of research to policy could provide a fruitful avenue for future research. Such a shift requires a longer term, spatially informed perspective as well as greater emphasis on the changing power relations that mediate young people’s experiences of wider social and economic transformations. The paper concludes that promoting employment among urban young people requires a marked shift to address the historically and geographically inadequate knowledge and assumptions on which policies are based.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Crisp & Ryan Powell, 2017. "Young people and UK labour market policy: A critique of ‘employability’ as a tool for understanding youth unemployment," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(8), pages 1784-1807, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:54:y:2017:i:8:p:1784-1807
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098016637567
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Ronald W. McQuaid & Colin Lindsay, 2005. "The Concept of Employability," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 42(2), pages 197-219, February.
    2. Blyth, Mark, 2013. "Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199828302.
    3. Nik Theodore, 2007. "New Labour at work: long-term unemployment and the geography of opportunity," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 31(6), pages 927-939, November.
    4. Ewart Keep & Ken Mayhew, 2010. "Moving beyond skills as a social and economic panacea," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 24(3), pages 565-577, September.
    5. John Flint & Ryan Powell, 2012. "The English City Riots of 2011, ‘Broken Britain’ and the Retreat into the Present," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 17(3), pages 153-162, August.
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    Cited by:

    1. James Hart & Matt Henn, 2017. "Neoliberalism and the Unfolding Patterns of Young People’s Political Engagement and Political Participation in Contemporary Britain," Societies, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-19, November.

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