Youth Prospects in the Digital Society: Identities and Inequalities in an Unravelling Europe 9781447351474

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“Exquisitely written, a timely and imperative treatise on the most pressing issues of our times for young people’s journey to adulthood.” Marlis Buchmann, University of Zurich “A thorough and critical analysis of identity problems of young people in the digital age, written by two renowned masters of sociological theory.” Klaus Hurrelmann, Hertie-School of Governance, Berlin “This engaging book is the fruit of decades of scholarly research and fertile friendship between two experts on how young people navigate the transition to adulthood.” Frank Coffield, University College London In an age when the next generation have worse prospects than those of their parents, this book appraises the challenges young people face resulting from the instability of their lives. Based on youth experience of education, employment and political participation in England and Germany, the book examines the impact of digitalisation in the context of rising inequality, accelerating technological transformation, fragile European institutions, growing nationalism and mental and economic stress arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. The insights gained point to young peoples’ agency as central to acquiring the skills and resources needed to shape their future in the digital society. John Bynner is Professor Emeritus of Social Sciences in Education in the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at the University College London Institute of Education. Walter R. Heinz is Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Psychology, and Senior Faculty member of the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences at the University of Bremen.

ISBN 978-1-4473-5148-1

@policypress @policypress PolicyPress policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk

9 781447 351481

Youth Prospects in the Digital Society John Bynner and Walter R. Heinz

“In our world of accelerating change, pathways to a promising future have become increasingly more complex and elusive for contemporary generations of youth. This is a must-read for all who wish to enhance their agency in a successful transition.” Glen Elder, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

YOUTH PROSPECTS IN THE DIGITAL SOCIETY Identities and Inequalities in an Unravelling Europe John Bynner and Walter R. Heinz

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Policy Press, an imprint of Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1-​9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +44 (0)117 954 5940 e: bup-​[email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2021 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-4473-5146-7 hardcover ISBN 978-1-4473-5148-1 paperback ISBN 978-1-4473-5149-8 ePub ISBN 978-1-4473-5147-4 ePdf The right of John Bynner and Walter R. Heinz to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the authors and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press and Policy Press work to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design: Liam Roberts Front cover image: iStock/smartboy10 Bristol University Press and Policy Press use environmentally responsible print partners. Printed and bound in Great Britain by CMP, Poole

Contents List of abbreviations About the authors Acknowledgements Preface

iv v vi vii

Introduction: Pathways to adulthood 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Social structure and inequality Identity and social media Youth and Europe Navigating the transition to adulthood Education, capability and skills Smart families and community Political participation, mobilisation and the internet Impact of COVID-​19 on youth

1 11 29 45 61 79 95 111 127

Conclusions: Youth policy challenges

139

References Index

153 165

iii

List of abbreviations AfD AI CDU CEDEFOP CMC CSU CTE DAAD DESI ECTS EU FES FfF GDR GR HE IoT IT JUSO MOOC NEET OECD PISA SPD VET WHO

Alternative for Germany artificial intelligence Christian Democratic Union (Germany) European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training computer-​mediated  communications Christian Social Union (Germany, Bavaria) career and technical education German Academic Exchange Service Digital Economy and Society Index European Credit Transfer System European Union Friedrich-​Ebert-​Stiftung Fridays for Future (Former) East Germany Great Recession (2007/​08) higher education Internet of Things information technology Youth wing of the German Social Democratic Party Massive Open Online Course not in education, employment or training Organisation for Economic Co-​operation and Development Programme for International Student Assessment Social Democratic Party (Germany) vocational education and training World Health Organization

iv

About the authors John Bynner is Emeritus Professor of Social Sciences in Education

at the University College London Institute of Education, where he was Director of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, the Wider Benefits of Learning Research Centre and founding Director of the National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy. In retirement he has been responsible for establishing the think tank Longview and the Journal of the Society for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies. Walter R. Heinz is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Psychology at

the University of Bremen, Germany and senior faculty member at the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS). He was visiting chair of German and European Studies at the University of Toronto and after retirement was research director of the German Centre of Higher Education and Science Research (DZHW). His research has been on life course transitions in the context of education and work.

v

Acknowledgements We wish to acknowledge the many friends, family and collaborators who supplied the inspiration for the book. Valerie Bynner and Eva Heinz are owed our particular thanks for patiently accompanying our writing. We also want to thank Janet Leigh Foster for her excellent work in preparing our manuscript for publication. We dedicate this book to our grandchildren.

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Preface This book has quite a long history in its making as we have been collaborating on research about young people and their individual pathways to adulthood since the mid-​1980s. We began at a time when traditional heavy industry and manufacturing were giving way to competition and new industrial processes from the Far East and when youth unemployment was high. The aim was to compare education to employment transitions in the United Kingdom and Germany. Our approach was to combine quantitative and qualitative methods in understanding differences in young people’s experience between the two countries in making the transition from school to work. We concluded that the respective roles of institutions tailored to each country’s vocational education and training (VET) arrangements, with deep cultural roots, was central to both establishing and maintaining the different pathways to adulthood. Such pathways also opened the door to understanding young people’s aspirations and achievements together with the challenges that faced them in realising their goals. We wanted to learn what motivated the choices made and what demographic and cultural factors helped or hindered them. Thirty years later, the global financial crisis and the ‘Great Recession’ that followed in 2008 became the stimulus for another collaborative project about the pathways to adulthood involving colleagues in the US as well as Europe. This time the aim was to elucidate the life course effects of the recession set against continuing economic and social trends in the context of accelerating demographic change. Apart from continuities in the economy and society from then to now, the current book breaks quite new ground. This time our investigation extends to such new socio-​economic effects as the rise of robotics and artificial intelligence, the gig economy and digitalisation as reflected in the transformations of everyday life and work brought about by the internet. In a further step, we extended our interest to the potential unravelling of the European Union triggered by Britain’s decision to leave  –​ Brexit –​and the impact this might have on young people in the UK and Germany and more widely across Europe. Hence, other themes of the book regarding young people’s life course include the role of their political participation and family engagement through the internet. Today, transitions occur in a setting of further transformation and the digital society. Our idea is to use these new societal developments to reframe such life course challenges as structural inequality, the forming

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Youth Prospects in the Digital Society

of identity and social and economic exclusion. Our story thus moves from the preparation of young people for a new economy to the world of digitalisation and the uncharted territory of the ‘Internet of Everything’. We finished the book in the shadow of the COVID-​19 (novel coronavirus) pandemic, whose long-​term consequences for all generations cannot be predicted. By circumstance rather than as originally planned we also now extend consideration to the as yet largely unobservable long-​term consequences of COVID-​19 on youth prospects. We must rely on the younger generation to contribute to a masterplan for recovering from this fatal crisis. We must also demand political commitment to curbing the pandemic and supporting its victims and an international strategy of prevention so that it does not happen again.

Postscript The research reported here was completed in November 2020 in advance of the successful development of a vaccine to defeat the virus and the subsequent variants that have followed. Though the supply of vaccines takes longer than expected, success is evident – but the future remains uncertain, pointing to the continuing need for vigilance in which young people will be playing a major part.

viii

Introduction: Pathways to adulthood Much is written about the conflict between generations. Such tensions are at their strongest in the teens when the parental controls of childhood give way to the freedoms of youth while, at the same time, holding onto the sentiments of respect and dependency that children feel for their parents. Parent–​child relationships tend to become more relaxed in young adulthood, when the transition from education to work defines this phase of the life course and parents’ emotional and material support is called for.

Stability and change A continuing theme of family relationships is what the future will offer for young people and this is where we are witnessing unparalleled technologically driven and political change in which population movement, neo-​nationalism and widening inequality are major features. Thus, the recession arising from the 2007/​08 global banking crisis is just the most recent example of disrupted capitalist economies, bailed out by government funding, of which young people leaving education can bear the brunt. What worked for their parents in the transition to adulthood, including finding job opportunities, building a career and forming a family, is unlikely to work in the same way for them. The choices they must make are laden with risk and uncertainty in a way that was unknown until relatively recently. Most recently COVID-​19 has created societies in standstill mode with restrictions in all spheres of everyday life, presenting a completely new challenge for young and old. The situation is also compounded by the fact that even before the coronavirus pandemic broke out many features of modern society were already changing at high speed, especially in the labour market as the consequence of digitalisation. The younger generation is confronted with a permanently changing world and transforming opportunities for learning and working whatever the outcome of the pandemic. According to a group of leading life course scientists (Settersten et al, 2020, p 38), ‘the pandemic is reshaping transitions and trajectories in every domain of life’. Virologists and the World Health Organization

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Youth Prospects in the Digital Society

(WHO) are warning that the effects of the second wave will be more serious and put more people at risk when a vaccine against the COVID-​ 19 virus will not be available for everyone. Such radical change challenges the traditional ways in which societies prepare young people for the world of adulthood. The idea of a ‘skills set’ attached to a specific occupation gives way to a portfolio of more generic attributes (‘soft skills’) underpinning adaptability. There is then the prospect of lifelong learning to keep abreast of the new competencies and the more broadly based capabilities that employers and the labour market demand. Skills must be flexible to have contemporary labour market value. And in the case of the most fundamental skills, on which the others are built, such as literacy, numeracy and, increasingly, mastery of digital media, their value in the entry to adulthood extends to effective functioning in the family and community including, potentially, having and rearing children. These wider benefits of learning tend to be disregarded in the economic analysis of skills, which focuses on the labour market value attached to them, that is, human capital. The broader approach contends that skills are productive, namely of value in the workplace, expandable, that is, enhanced by education and training, and social, being socially produced principally in the home, at school and in the workplace. The notion of ‘capability’ extends the behavioural concept of skill to embrace the personal and social goals to which the skill is directed. This is to say, as well as being economically serviceable, skills to become capabilities must have motivational value. Fostering the acquisition of shareable and expandable skills, effective (vocational and academic) education should therefore be preparing young people for capability in all the different life course domains in which they have a stake. In terms of sustainability, such capability is perhaps the core component of adult identity. The greater the need for extended preparation for self-​directed functioning in adult life, the greater the need for public investment in education. This principle applies not just at the top end of the achievement distribution, where universities and the prestige attached to them reside, but across the whole educational spectrum, including the bottom end where the risk of marginalisation is most pressing. But at the same time there can be personal and private costs to be met by all students, as reflected in the tendency of government in the UK and of private universities on the continent to charge fees for participation at an ever-​increasing level. There is thus a price to pay at all stages of post-​compulsory education, for which staying on in education at least

2

Introduction

until 18 is becoming the norm. In contrast, in Germany and most northern European countries education is public and free. Tuition fees are only one part of the burden families and young people must bear if they are to find an effective and fulfilling niche in the occupational structure and achieve the other markers of adulthood. Such measures, driven by the still-​prevalent neo-​liberal thinking carried over from the Reagan and Thatcher years, were reinforced by austerity regimes following the 2007/​08 banking collapse. The outcome demanded an expanded injection by families of financial and other resources to support young people’s progress to adulthood. The deferment of payment and extended dependency of young people stretch family budgets to the limit. On the other hand, following the US lead of increasing use of student loans to meet education costs shifts the burden more onto young people themselves, saddling them with debt long after leaving the family home. There is no guarantee that they will reach the levels of well-​paid employment that will enable them to get free of debt –​hence the UK Office of National Statistics acknowledgement in 2018 that 45 per cent will never do so. In Germany, by way of contrast, early experiments with charging fees for higher education (HE) by some of the federal-​states (Länder) governments have, under public pressure, led to abandoning the idea. At the same time as paying for post-​compulsory education, other increasingly problematic demands upon family budgets will accompany transitions in domestic life, including the costs of forming a family and, especially, renting a flat or owning a home of one’s own. In consequence, another effect of changing times is postponement of the commitments involved in marriage, partnership and parenthood by those who want to gain the opportunities that qualifications bring. The other component of these life course changes is the situation of those without the family resources to get them onto the extended educational ladder in the first place. For them, the prospect may be insecurity of much of the employment that follows or stretches of unemployment. Again, without resources to bolster them against the vagaries of the labour market, such young people are increasingly pushed towards its margins and the margins of adult society more generally. The growth of such a two-​track progression creates a ‘gig’ economy, with those with employment contracts on the upper track and the rest in forming part of an insecure ‘precariat’. The inevitable consequence is an increasingly polarised society that is another feature of the neo-​liberal policy response to technologically driven change. To make sense of these dramatic transformations both in the social and economic world in which young people grow up and in their

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Youth Prospects in the Digital Society

experience of the opportunities available to them, we use a conceptual framework that brings together all facets of this new experience. The life course perspective as formulated originally by Glen Elder and colleagues in the 1960s (see Heinz, Huinink and Weymann, 2009) meets this requirement, stressing a holistic approach that embraces the interconnectedness of transitions in all life course domains. The historical context of this economic transformation has five important benchmarking events:  the end of the Soviet Union, the establishment of the European Union, the growth of information technology, the digitalisation revolution and climate change. Sitting alongside them but with long-​term consequences that are impossible to gauge is the COVID-​19 pandemic. These events have in a sense supplied a backcloth to social change, the impact of which is perhaps too little acknowledged in youth studies.

Themes and contexts To open this historical account of youth’s situation in changing times, we begin with a brief overview of the transformations in the context of becoming adult in the period of the IT revolution, post-​1980. We focus on two contrasting societies –​Germany and the UK –​so that these changes might be best understood. Although the timing and, in some cases, forms of social change differ between countries, we can identify in all of them five common elements having resonance in the main domains in which youth transitions occur: education, labour market, family (partnership and parenthood), self-​sufficiency and community. To exemplify similarities and contrasts in the effects of change we focus on youth experience compared between the two countries in terms of four main themes. The first theme is technological transformation of the means of production and communication through which many past skills and capabilities became redundant, placing new demands on the workforce and different vocational and academic preparation systems. The second theme is globalisation of the labour market, trade and consumption, characterised by increased mobility of investments, markets, goods and services across the world and common forms of culture shared through new media. The third theme is individualisation and exclusion. The former refers to reliance in the contemporary situation of increasing risk and uncertainty placed on individual and or family resources and the breakdown of the traditional (communal) ways of socialising young people into adult roles and responsibilities. The latter refers to the increasing polarisation between those with the resources to take

4

Introduction

advantage of opportunity and those without them, with the risk of becoming permanently excluded from mainstream adult life. The fourth theme that we are currently experiencing takes technological change further towards digitalisation and the digital society, embracing increasing reliance on artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics in place of people in the workplace. It also embraces the ‘gig’ economy based on the zero-​hour contracts that supply large amounts of the limited work available. We define ‘digitalisation’ as a process of converting analogue information into digital format that is applied in business, communications and work –​and increasingly in education, exacerbated by the school closures in the attempts to control the spread of the virus. That is to say, ‘digitalisation’ is the transformation of expressions of continuous change such as hot or cold into discrete numerical entities (digits). Digitalisation as encapsulated by the internet increases speed and flexibility in all spheres of living, learning and working.

Changing life course Although the focus is in large part economic, reflecting the central role of the occupations young people can expect to take up and the kinds of careers they might hope to have (‘social reproduction’ and ‘social mobility’) the influences arising from these change factors run much deeper than this. They contribute to the shaping of social, domestic and civic life, and the cultural forms (‘youth culture’) through which versions of youth identity are expressed. Thus, intergenerational continuities and discontinuities can be seen in the contrast between young people’s experience and that of their parents during the same ages and stages of the life course. These factors heighten the potential for intergenerational conflict and tension while also offering forms of intergenerational continuity and solidarity to deal with difficulties. This solidarity is vital in face of the recently demonstrated vulnerability of older people as likely victims of COVID-​19. Where societal differences of life course effects can be expected is first in the range of labour market opportunities available at any particular time, while varying from one country or region to the next; and second in the different ways of managing the transition from education to the labour market, described as VET. VET systems, therefore, supply one of the key structural components of individual life course construction to which we devote attention in this book. They are distinctive in reflecting the cultural assumptions embodied in institutional beliefs that different societies hold about what it takes to ensure a successful transition to adulthood. The

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Youth Prospects in the Digital Society

others, which set the parameters for framing the influences stemming from our major change factors, are in life course terms location in time and space (embracing class and culture), personal agency (propensity to action), linked lives (social relationships) and timing (age, period and cohort effects). We draw attention particularly to the role of individual agency in coping with changing socio-​economic circumstances through the process of ‘self-​socialisation’, set against the structural constraints, including institutional filtering mechanisms, that determine the way youth transitions are experienced and shaped.

Cultural change What is likely the most profound of the cultural shifts considered so far is only just beginning. The development of digital technology at the beginning of the 21st century was less than 10 years old. First mobile phones (1991), then the internet (1994) revolutionised not only the means of communication (through email and the development of new social media) but the nature of social relationships and social life in ways that both widened and narrowed the generation gap. The phenomenal growth of digital communication transformed the ways in which information was gathered and disseminated, how entertainment was received, how goods and lifestyles were promoted and how relationships were formed. The traditional media of newsprint, film and vinyl records suffered generational rejection, except by the nostalgic, in favour of downloads and streaming to smartphones and iPads, that is, a form of digitalised individualism. Social networking sites, such as Facebook and WhatsApp, became the staples for finding friends, maintaining friendships and organising social life, boosting new ways of building social capital. The pace of change, which continues to accelerate, overtook the means of monitoring, control and regulation to which the traditional media had been subjected. The instances of unshackled pornography and cyberbullying, and, to the chagrin of governments, the worldwide circulation of classified information, have come to constitute the dominant communications challenge of the age. Finally, the digital generation is far less (party) political than the baby boomers and their immediate successors. Across Europe and in the US expressed interest in establishment politics, frequency of political discussions and activity, trust in politicians, voting in elections and affiliations to political parties have declined across all age groups. On the other hand, mobilisation through social networks

6

Introduction

to participate in protests organised by new social movements and activists concerned with such issues as the environment, peace, women’s rights, race equality and, more recently, hiked student fees in the UK were able to attract large numbers of young people. Such pressure groups as ‘Occupy’ have proved the effect of using the internet in challenging power, vested interests and establishment thinking. This has manifested in quite new and effective ways; for example, Momentum in the UK and the youth wing of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Germany have galvanised the political left –​a sign of ‘digitalised democracy’? The Fridays for Future movement succeeded in mobilising millions of young people all over the world in support of environmental protection.

Advent of the COVID-​19 pandemic The cultural shifts we have been considering derive from long-​term processes, the origins and progress of which are relatively straightforward to predict. They are now joined by a disruptive force of a different character in the form of COVID-​19, which cuts across them, accelerating some of the transformations brought about by digitalisation while also presenting social consequences, the destination of which is impossible to see. We shall be exploring the short-​term significance and likely long-​term impact of the virus and governments’ efforts to combat its spread (see ­chapter 8 and conclusion) while seeking to identify general principles in terms of which the future might be perceived. Such principles include in particular disruptive experiences of lockdown, comprising school closures, postponed examinations, home learning and work for young people at different ages –​not to mention unemployment –​that are now playing out in terms of the risks and consequences of a continuing pandemic. The duration of curtailing what were until the pandemic taken for granted features of everyday living remains uncertain, depending also on the compliance of young people. Their counterpart comprises government intervention at an unparalleled level, mandating the wearing of protective clothing such as facemasks and behavioural restrictions on physical contacts, including those everyday interactions at work like shaking hands, and assembling in public places such as at protest meetings or parties. The rising uncertainty is reinforced by the possibility of further waves of the virus and economic restructuring on an unparalleled scale. Further consequences for many young people are mental health problems and bouts of depression as familiar contacts and activity break

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down. As we shall see, the extent to which such experiences will have lasting generational effects remains an open question.

Preview of this volume The preceding paragraphs give a broad overview of the socio-​economic historical, cultural and now pandemic changes that were occurring over the period from the 1990s transformations to the present time. The following sets out the chapters in the present volume. Chapter 1, ‘Social structure and inequality’, focuses on the meaning and effects of social inequality from a structural perspective. That is to say, how life chances are based on wealth and income in populations distributed demographically according to such features as education, age, ethnicity, locality and nationality. How is inequality impacted by such factors as globalisation, migration and how do national economic and social policies respond? Where do the prospects of achievement in education and the labour market lie and which social mechanisms are involved in the unequal structuring of youth transitions? Chapter 2, ‘Identity and social media’, examines youth identity from a number of perspectives, starting with psychological and sociological conceptualisations of identity and moving from there to the controversy over stages of identity development, identity as a biographical resource and the complexities of digital employment and identity construction through social networking. Chapter  3, ‘Youth and Europe’, extends the notion of identity further, this time in the context of the development of the European Union and the mission of establishing European identity. It was hoped that young people in all the EU states would develop a feeling of belonging to a supra-​national community alongside that of their home countries. From the perspective of social justice, we look at the distribution of resources and the rates of youth unemployment in the UK and Germany. The contribution of EU youth policies to young people’s participation and active citizenship as well as to respecting and integrating cultural diversity is also highlighted. The focus of Chapter 4, ‘Navigating the transition to adulthood’, is on the drivers and routes that young people have to navigate in what is now a labour market ever more replete with risk. We compare the transition from education to work from the perspective of institutional arrangements and discuss the effects of restructured occupations on the pathways of vocational training and academic education. A core theme is how social class and differences in the welfare mix young people can rely on are influencing the process and outcomes of transitions.

8

Introduction

Chapter  5, ‘Education, capability and skills’, extends the topic of learning more broadly, focusing initially on the implications of digitalisation for both the content and delivery of education in the digital society, including the specific knowledge and skills needed to operate in it. The chapter also considers the distinctive contributions informal and formal education make to generic skills and lifelong learning, the central aim of which is building capabilities that match economic and life course needs. Chapter  6, ‘Smart families and community’, turns to the digital society and its effect on family life and family members of different ages through the idea of the ‘Smart Family’. Such a family is composed of active users of the internet and social media individually and together, leading on to the issue of ‘opportunities’ versus ‘risks’ in social networking and parents’ approach to it. We finish with the pros and cons of the case for media education and control. This topic is also highlighted in Chapter 7, ‘Political participation, mobilisation and the internet’, focusing on political education and engagement in use of the internet, examining the impressive digitalised campaigns launched internationally on such issues as climate change. Young people’s voting preferences in national and EU elections and political activism are also addressed, including the new political initiatives, groupings and parties that the internet has inspired across Europe. Though data are still scarce, Chapter  8, ‘Impact of COVID-​19 on youth’, attempts to illuminate the disruptions of young people’s lives and transitions resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. Pre-​ existing social problems are becoming more visible in young people and impacting on their families’ capacity to respond to the effect of the virus on their living circumstances. Coping with the lockdown is creating tensions in families that must adapt to school closures, working at home, short-​time work and the threat of unemployment. Young adults’ life plans are becoming uncertain, an experience that may foreshadow life course discontinuity. The longer this situation lasts the greater will be the necessity for policy intervention in order to prevent an unrecoverable breakdown of transitions. Policy issues arising from digitalisation in neo-​liberal economies are outlined in the last chapter, ‘Conclusion:  youth policy challenges’, based on the findings of the preceding chapters. The themes of inequality, identity, the digital economy and the pandemic are centrally addressed, together with such key topics as the future of vocational education and training in the digital society, job creation, family and community life and universal connectivity. We argue that government

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should be under an obligation to ensure that every young person has access to the technical and educational resources needed to shape the transition to adulthood according to their talents and life goals and to acquire the capability to participate fully in the digital society. We also throw light on the ramifications of the COVID-​19 crisis on young people’s prospects, in the absence of being able to formulate reliable predictions.

10

1

Social structure and inequality Reward work, not wealth. (Oxfam briefing, 22 January 2018) Our discussion starts with the US as a disturbing example of the impact of neo-​liberal thinking on unequal prospects of youth by considering the consequences of social origin on transition processes and outcomes in the changing economic and political contexts of education and work. The first stop is perhaps surprisingly not Europe but the US, which economically sets the agenda for what happens in the countries to which it is closest, such as Germany and the UK in Europe. Social inequality is a basic feature of societies that is built on the unequal distribution of property and income from work. For social scientists there are generally four dimensions to be distinguished:  education, occupation, income, and wealth; these stratify the population into segments of people with different life chances and social mobility prospects. Since the beginning of the 21st century, as comparative research shows, there has been a widening disparity in the life chances associated with these strata between the social classes in the western democracies (see Blossfeld et al, 2005, 2008; Picketty, 2014). Educational inequalities have characterised the differentiation of pathways to adulthood since the 1970s (Jencks, 1972) in the US and in the post-​social democratic period increasingly in Europe, where the global trend towards higher education as a means of achieving social mobility became popular. The effect of family and schooling on young people’s transition to employment and independent living arrangements has been widely documented. During the subsequent decades, the gap between lower and higher education became larger, due to the concentration of wealth and academic credentials in the upper classes. Moreover, as research shows, the middle class is divided into two segments:  traditional middle class and new middle class, both fearing downward social mobility due to globalisation and the digitalisation of work (Gilbert, 2002). In Germany, the traditional middle class consists of VET graduates, skilled workers, qualified service employees, and small and middle-​sized enterprises (SME), whose values are centred on status maintenance,

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Youth Prospects in the Digital Society

material well-​being and an orderly life. The new middle class consists of HE graduates (BA/​MA), whose value orientations are focussed on self-​realisation, quality of life and cosmopolitism. About 60 per cent of the German population belongs to the two middle-​class segments, which are tied to negotiated income increases, occupational standards and economic well-​being, and are independent of welfare state provisions (Nachtwey, 2018). They experienced moderate income gains, employment and economic stability since the ‘Great Recession’ (GR) in 2008 but are confronted with increasing housing costs and declining pensions. Recently, there has been decline of confidence in policy makers, a spread of anti-​elitist attitudes and a leaning towards the right wing among members of the conservative segments of the lower middle class and the lower class, triggered by the large number of refugees coming to Germany. These developments led to changes in the perception of social justice, also expressed in public opinion affecting young people’s outlook towards the future. A new classification of the British class structure similarly showed a solid middle-​class component, but by 2012 only 40 per cent classified themselves as middle class.

US and Europe at the front of rising inequality Education and life chances are at the centre of the perception of social justice from generation to generation across the world, becoming a political issue in Europe and the US. In this scenario intellectual capital becomes heritable, not based on talent and achievement as in the past. Well-​to-​do parents start their children’s career prospects by ensuring their achievement in kindergarten, moving to communities with excellent, mainly private schools, and direct their children towards the academic pathways. Parental wealth, income and ambition decide who enters college and university in the neo-​liberal knowledge society, where the demand for bright, flexible and IT-​fluent young people with a college degree is immense. The mechanisms for producing such a status-​enhancement pattern are supported by the US government’s education policy and replicated, albeit to a more limited extent, in the UK. More is spent on schools in rich areas than in poor ones, and funds are cut for public universities, that have increased tuition fees in turn. In the US, public and private university fees have risen 17 times as fast as median incomes since 1980 and some institutions even offer privileged admission for children of alumni. Similar changes are characterising the system of higher education in the UK, whereas in Germany students do not have to pay for academic education.

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Social structure and inequality

The growth of the opportunity gap and class disparities in the US was vividly analysed by Robert Putnam (2015), who studied selected US communities, including his hometown in Ohio, and interviewed his former classmates and young people and their parents. He shows first that there has been a ‘breath-​taking increase in economic inequality (in the US) during the past decades’ (2015, p 35): the income of college-​ educated men rose from 20 per cent to 56 per cent, while for men with a low level of education income declined by 22 per cent. Second, there is growing segregation by social class across neighbourhoods. Well-​to-​ do and poor Americans live in separate and increasingly unequal worlds, which brings about a decline of contacts between people of different social milieus, ties which used to be steppingstones for jobs and social mobility (Kornrich, 2016). Strong social ties (local relationships and connections) dominate, whereas weak ties that connect with other social milieus are rare. Residential sorting of this kind impacts on the quality and social composition of schools; peers’ family background tends to have a stronger impact on teenagers’ achievement even than the student’s own family. Neighbourhood influences are strong in adolescence through their capacity to provide direction for transitions and turning points. This is to say, such influences open up options and sometimes opportunities for future pathways in education and employment. Thus, the level of education matters more than ever in the transition to employment. Thus, a college degree was worth 50 per cent more in income than a regular high school degree in 1980, but in the last decade it was worth 95 per cent more (Putnam, 2015, p 184). This income gap motivates many young people (usually with the help of their parents) to enrol in private (for-​profit) learning organisations in order to compensate for the missing degree. Putnam (2015) argues that the ‘two-​tier’ social structure has detrimental effects on family life and values, and leads to changing patterns of socialisation. Economic hardship fosters family fragmentation, parental neglect (screen-​time vs. face-​to-​face time) and precarious transitions. The gap between low-​income and affluent families continues to increase; young people from well-​to-​do backgrounds pull further and further ahead. This difference in experience also impacts on the internet and smartphone practices: affluent Americans use their digital devices in such a way that enhances knowledge and mobility (Rainee and Wellman, 2012) whereas the less well-​off families use the internet mainly for entertainment, recreation and, in the case of young people, for social networking. In their study ‘The fading American dream’ economists Chetty and colleagues (2016) report that the distribution of economic growth has

13

Youth Prospects in the Digital Society

become more uneven from generation to generation. Compared to the 1940 cohort, people born in 1980 earned only 50 per cent more than their parents. Income of the lower strata has been stagnant for two decades. An explanation for the increasing inequality of the US social structure is offered by French economist Thomas Piketty (2014). The big gains in the returns to capital investment have been made by the upper middle (professional) class since the end of the 1980s, compared to a decline or stagnation of income in the lower middle and working class. Piketty’s (2014) analysis of economic data shows a decline in equality. This transformation of the life chances also affects the social structures of the UK and Germany. The post-​World War II ‘social democratic age’ in the Global North was a special historical constellation with a relatively egalitarian social structure, moderate income differences and upward mobility. In the last three decades, however, inequality has been on the rise; wealth –​ especially inherited wealth  –​has become the dominant power and status marker. In consequence, the small class of very rich people has had a strong influence on the political process (‘Trumpism’ in the US). A society with a high wealth-​to-​annual income ratio will be an unpleasant society in many ways (see Boushey, DeLong and Steinbaum, 2017). This also concerns the social class-​and-​education nexus. Increasing inequality leads to more segmentation in the education system:  the rich are opting out of state schools and universities in favour of private education providers. From a life course perspective on youth, the end of the social democratic era coincides with the end of the ‘baby-​boomer’ generation (Roberts, 2012). For the following generations transitions to adulthood occur in a context of uncertainty about the returns of educational investment and the likelihood of multiple job changes. The new digital economy in a neo-​liberal framework has been transforming the labour markets and the welfare systems in Europe and North America. However, because of the clearly differentiated institutional arrangements, the policy responses in Germany and the UK have their own distinctive features. There is increasing economic inequality, a deepening of the gap between the rich, middle class and poor people in neo-​liberal societies, constituting a continuing threat to social cohesion. The share of national income gained by very rich people has been growing from year to year in Germany, as documented by a recent study based on European Central Bank data (Bach, 2018). The top percentile’s share of household wealth in Germany jumped from 24 per cent to 33 per cent in the last decade –​and 5 per cent owned 51 per cent of the

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Social structure and inequality

country’s wealth. Over the same period in the UK the top percentile earned 45 per cent of the country’s wealth compared with 5 per cent for the bottom percentile. This book asks to what extent the social structures of Germany and the UK are becoming more unequal for the younger generation. What policies will be necessary to prevent a high wealth-​to-​annual income ratio taking over in Europe and thereby increasing the inequality of the social structure?

Globalisation and path-​dependency We assume that an answer must bring into focus the ‘path-​dependency’ of a social structure, that is, the historical imprint of a society’s constitution, institutions, production and welfare system, and infrastructure. Path-​dependency challenges the application of general theories of youth that tend to disregard the specific institutions, economic, social and cultural contexts in which young people’s life chances are embedded. Take, for example, post-​World War II Germany, which was divided into a (capitalist) West Germany and a (socialist) East Germany. West Germany was constructed as a federal state with a social market economy that defined the framework of education, labour, social policy and the relationships between generations. East Germany, in common with the rest of the post-​war Soviet countries, operated a demand economy under Moscow’s direction. Recent historical turning points such as the reunification of Germany in 1990 and the wave of refugees in 2015 demanded an adaptation of the socio-​economic and socio-​political structures but did not interrupt the path-​dependency of its education and labour market institutions. Industrial relations and vocational education and training continue to be coordinated in accordance with the principles of social partnership –​comprising a collaboration of the state, employers’ associations and trade unions. The European Union and the globalisation of markets have contributed to a change in the higher education system: The Bologna Process, a joint EU project, led to a restructuring of higher education, involving the introduction of the Bachelor (BA) and Master (MA) degrees. In Germany, the increasing demand for university graduates qualified for working in IT occupations led to a declining attraction of apprenticeship, the core of VET. The schools, however, are still organised as a three-​tier system which mirrors the social class structure. After primary school, there are three pathways:  main school (Hauptschule), middle school (Realschule) and higher school (Gymnasium). Only the Gymnasium connects with the academic

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Youth Prospects in the Digital Society

pathways. After German reunification, the tripartite system was reinstated, replacing the comprehensive schools’ policy that had preceded it in East Germany. In the UK basic education comprises ‘Comprehensive’ (90 per cent of the population) or binary: ‘Grammar schools’ (academic; 10 per cent) and ‘Secondary Modern schools’ (non-​academic; 90 per cent), depending on the policy of the local authority (jurisdiction) where the education is supplied. There is also, by the standards of other European countries, a large and well-​attended private (fee-​paying) education sector including elite institutions. These institutions such as Eton and Harrow for boys and Roedean for girls are where the upper middle class and aristocracy send their children. And more importantly they also supply the favoured access route to the elite universities of Oxford and Cambridge, taking up about half the places available. The Brexit narrative documents what path-​dependency means in the UK. As a constitutional monarchy, it relates to the part of the population’s and elites’ self-​image, and political and cultural identity, as a Commonwealth of former colonies. Brexit, a decision by a majority of the British people to leave the EU –​finally in 2020 –​created a turning point that has now led to the return to the pathway of Britain as an independent nation, favouring strong ties with the Commonwealth and especially the US. What Brexit will mean for young people and their transition to adulthood is a premature question; it is conceivable that there will be an intensification of path-​dependent inequalities in wealth, education, occupation and income distribution. What is unlikely is that a VET pathway, as understood in Germany as essential prior to entering skilled work and secure employment, will be introduced. Despite numerous attempts to establish a British version of Germany’s dual system, the apprenticeship has never been a popular pathway for young people in Britain, attracting no more than 120,000 from each year cohort compared with Germany’s 600,000. At the same time in Britain vocational training courses in further education colleges, on-​ the-​job training, staying on at school or simply leaving without any job prospects will continue to make up the difference. Years before Brexit was seriously on the political agenda, the circumstances surrounding the transition to work were changing. A  comparison of cohorts born in 1958 and 1970 (Bynner and Parsons, 2000), saw a radical reshaping of the British social structure differentiating between those who could rely on family material, social, educational resources and support for entering the pathways to secure and rewarding employment and those who lacked them.

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Social structure and inequality

Such two-​track transitions involve young people in virtuous and vicious circles, leading to a privileged segment with relatively secure prospects via higher and further education and to a disadvantaged segment destined for a precarious future (Standing, 2011). In contrast with the 1970s, the social structure of opportunities for young people had thus been transformed from a pattern of early-​education-​to-​ employment transitions following in the footsteps of parents into a polarised pattern of successful and failing transitions (Bynner, 2012). This change is due to the loss of manufacturing and craft jobs that provided stable employment for young people without vocational qualifications. In contrast to the UK, because of a booming labour market, there is no indication that the segment of youth in precarious circumstances has been growing in Germany since the Great Recession. However, young migrants and refugees who are given asylum will face unemployment and social exclusion for quite some time, that is, until they have managed to graduate from language and VET preparation courses (IAB, 2019). There is an enormous growth of wealth in Germany. The upper 10 per cent of the population, who live on inheritance, capital investment and tax evasion, are constantly gaining, compared to moderate income growth among the middle class and a decline of the living standards and increased poverty in the low-​income populations (according to the Labour Force Survey, 20 per cent of children live in deprivation compared with 30 per cent in the UK). The German government placed a high priority on maintaining its social market policy over periods of economic recession. It succeeded in doing so by means of active job creation, moderate income increases and an unemployment and social benefits model which puts a premium on young people’s ambitions and activities in (re-​)entering the labour market (Heinz, 2014). These actions did not, however, improve the life chances of young people from low-​income and migrant families. Recent data from the German Trade Union (DGB) points out that 15 per cent of those under 30 years old lacked a completed vocational or academic education; many had to work in the gig economy, accepting jobs with little chance of proceeding to stable continuing employment. One reason for uncertain employment futures is the impact of the global neo-​liberal economy and of the digitalisation of work on the European labour markets. International firms and financial markets dominate the employment requirements and the wage structures in Europe (France, 2016). In both the UK and Germany, we see a transformation of occupational structures: loss of crafts and manufacturing jobs, increase of jobs in the service sector, in IT,

17

Youth Prospects in the Digital Society

engineering, financial and business services. ‘Digital feudalism’ is on the rise, dominated by US IT and service companies, such as Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Amazon.

Employability and social class in the digital society Job specifications are changing from vocational skills and years of work experience to entrepreneurial, social, IT and management qualifications. There has been a transformation of the standards of employability: a shift from skill profiles, formal qualifications and work experience to self-​presentation, flexibility and optimal matching with the company culture. Such competences are unequally distributed by social origin, ethnicity and level of education (see Chapter 4). The meaning and potential of employability differs between the social classes. The values of formal qualifications and informal competence diverge:  the parents’ willingness to invest in their children’s higher education varies by their own employment history, the perceived structure of opportunities, and the kinds of social and educational capital that they have acquired. For young people the employment perspectives have shifted from permanent contracts to part-​time (mainly women), temporary, fixedterm and short-​term contracts. Job-​shopping and involuntary job-​ hopping becomes the rule at the beginning of the employment biography, testing the market and lining up in application chains, for example. Social inequality also becomes evident regarding wages. A long dispute over minimum wages in Germany between employers’ associations, the labour unions and the government led to a compromise at €8.50 in 2015 and was raised to €9.35 in 2020. The employers’ prediction of job losses turned out to be propaganda. Young people under age 18 without a completed VET, however, are not eligible to receive the minimum wage, in contrast with the UK, where they are eligible for it at the school-​leaving age, though they are paid less than in Germany when working in restaurants, fast food outlets or delivery services. Instead, they are paid by the hour or by how much ‘piece work’ they produce. Short-​term and poorly paid jobs risk precarious living circumstances (Standing, 2011) and continuing dependence on parents and welfare. Forty per cent of the first employment contracts gained by German young people in 2018 were fixed term. For example, these employment conditions are taken for granted in academia, where up to half of the contracts for young scientists are fixed term (one year); however, they are able to shape their future because of a strong competence profile. For young people with low-​level educational achievement and less than a VET certification, this leads to uncertain employment prospects. For

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Social structure and inequality

the lower social class, the effects of uncertain transition perspectives on families and neighbourhoods are destructive. There has been a decline in long-​term security and a postponement of family formation and home ownership (see Chapter 6). The transition to employment is becoming an individualised performance with innovative job application techniques, such as a curriculum vitae combined with a personalised video. Here social origin makes a difference, too. The social structure of qualifications is getting more stratified: on top is the MBA, signalling an applicant with social, management and entrepreneurial skills, followed by engineering and information technology degrees, with vocational certifications at the bottom. This structure of qualifications responds to the effects of technological transformation and global economic competition in the education system that also bring about changes in the meaning of work. Richard Sennett (2006) described the shift from the values of industrial capitalism to ‘digital capitalism’. This shift accelerated the decline of stable employment in favour of flexible work, which is becoming the new standard for young adults when entering the labour market. ‘Mac-​jobs’ and gig employment may facilitate the transition for unqualified youth, though offering jobs that in many cases lead to a dead end. Public and private employers offer primarily fixed term contracts to university graduates and vocationally qualified applicants. This distribution of employment patterns mirrors the structure of social inequality, which drives the social reproduction of life chances across generations, classes and races.

Education and the unequal distribution of life chances Lower-​class and migrant youth were particularly badly hit in Germany, by having a low-​level or non-​existent school attainment record. They have little chance of formal vocational preparation, including apprenticeship, and must cope with the risk of becoming part of an unskilled, semi-​skilled or deskilled reserve army of the service sector. They are confronted with episodes of unemployment or NEET (not in education, employment or training), while middle-​class college graduates may be facing episodes of underemployment and fixed-​term or zero-​hour contracts. Higher up in the social class structure, family resources, university degrees and associated social connections provide economic and cultural starting capital. In the UK, as in the US, there is the general expectation among middle-​class families that their children will stay on to enrol in higher education, approaching 50 per cent, with the opportunity to embark

19

Youth Prospects in the Digital Society

on a professional career path. Lower-​class youth anticipate mainly financial returns from educational investment, typically through further education colleges where they are joined by adults doing vocational courses or catching up. The middle and upper classes pursue their aspirations for the leading professions, such as law, architecture and medicine, with a focus on highly ranked and expensive universities. Such institutions are rare in Germany, where almost all providers of higher education are public and not allowed to charge tuition fees. However, social stratification is basic in Germany’s education system; it is still the most socially selective in Europe, reproducing the parental level of education (see Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rating). The number of pupils graduating from the low-​level secondary schools (Hauptschule) has been declining in recent decades, while the numbers in the high-​level schools (Gymnasium) have been rising to a historical high. The result has been a steadily increasing proportion of young people with the university admission certificate (Abitur/​A Level). In a growing number of middle-​class and virtually all upper-​class families, it is taken for granted that their offspring will get a university degree. Social and ethnic origin make a big difference, though. Most of the young adults from a lower class who succeed in the Gymnasium tend not to enter university but rather choose VET or dual studies (see Chapter 4). Many young immigrants similarly do not succeed in the pathway to higher education. Adding to language deficits, there is ethnic discrimination in the school and in everyday life. There are also remarkable regional, city and rural disparities in providing all levels of schooling and public facilities, even bus services. For the low achievers (8 per cent of school leavers), there is a pre-​vocational remedial transition system intended to improve their chances to get an apprenticeship; more boys than girls and immigrants than native Germans are on this pathway (BIBB, 2018). Equal opportunity was the goal of educational reform in Germany in the 1970s: public institutions were to promote lower-​class children in order to balance the advantages of those from higher social classes, from kindergarten to university. Despite the growth of private wealth and public enlightenment since, it turned out that equal opportunity was impossible to reach. Such a breakthrough is still unlikely as long as German society is structured not so much by individual achievement, but rather by social ascription as prescribed in the tripartite schooling system. Such sorting is reflected in the inheritance of wealth and privilege (Piketty, 2014), the social transmission of disadvantage and the accumulation of advantage (DiPrete and Eirich, 2006).

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Social structure and inequality

In neo-​liberal societies, social status and mobility increasingly depend on being able to participate in and to graduate from post-​ secondary education (the ‘college premium’). The growth of universities of applied sciences (former polytechnics), open universities and research universities in the UK and Germany beginning in the 1960s corresponded to the changing qualification demands in the upcoming knowledge society and was reinforced by the students’ call for institutional change towards political participation and citizenship rights.

Do working-​class kids still get working-​class jobs? The question raised by Paul Willis (1977), ‘Why do working-​class boys get working-​class jobs?’, was posed as the starting point for the 1970s–​ 80s industrial revolution. It is now replaced by the bigger question, whether in the current digital revolution there are any working-​class jobs left for working-​class boys to get. The decline of manufacturing and on-​the-​job training, and the shrinking of working-​class communities connected to a heavy industry like mining or ship building, or big plant manufacturing, have reduced the size and destroyed the lifestyle of working-​class communities. Such changes foreshadowed the end of the social democratic era. Young men from the working class could no longer aim at taking on or expect any privileged access to their father’s occupation on the shop floor, but had to search for options in the crafts and service sector, which required at least a secondary school certificate and post-​16 vocational certification. Social inequality has been increasing in Germany in the past two decades, as Martin Baethge (2017) showed. Reducing inequality would require deconstructing the basic structure of educational segmentation that consists of a broad well-​educated youth segment (upper-​and middle-​class background) and a quarter of the less educated lower-​class segment whose members are stuck in precarious living circumstance. Baethge (2017) documented with longitudinal SOEP (Socioeconomic Panel Study) data that the shift in the proportion of VET and the academic pathways not only impacts on the composition of the labour force but also affects the entire social structure. The educational expansion in the second half of the 20th century has been useful mainly for youth coming from the upper and middle classes whose share in academic education rose to more than 50 per cent; lower-​class young people only reached a share of 10 per cent in 2014. Comparable UK figures show a narrower distribution of 45 per cent of upper-​and middle-​class young people going to university compared with 20 per

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Youth Prospects in the Digital Society

cent of the lower class. In the UK, inevitably the chosen pathway is embedded in the class structure more explicitly than in Germany. At the top is the landed gentry with the social pinnacle being the royal family. Next comes the typically privately educated upper middle class with destinies in the upper ranks of the professions and the civil service. The lower middle class follows with low-​ranking white-​collar jobs and the manual working class comprising the trades and construction work, and finally the unskilled workers, now increasingly joined by the precariat (Ball, Maguire and Macrae, 2000; MacDonald and Marsh, 2005).

Migrants and refugees with limited prospects In the past decade, the issue of social justice has become the topic of a heated political debate on the integration of young migrants into the education, employment and social welfare systems. In contrast to Germany, the UK as a former colonial society has a long history, now much curtailed, of immigration of people from the Commonwealth. Therefore, ethnic prejudice and discrimination tend to be less; skin colour and dress are not read quite as strongly as indicators of social exclusion; furthermore, the level of education among immigrants has been rising:  Afro-​Caribbeans are one third more likely to enter university than white British pupils (Crawford and Greaves, 2015). However, minority graduates are more often in precarious employment. In Germany, ethnic background (visible foreigners) is an indicator of discrimination from housing, kindergarten and school all the way to university and employment. Despite the surprisingly warm welcome of refugees in autumn 2015, there is a traditional resentment and right-​wing rejection of strangers. Since the recruiting of so-​called ‘guest workers’ in the 1960s for the car manufacturers, the German government has not legislated to ensure that immigrants could have security and be eligible for citizenship. Government, employers and citizens assumed that the workers would return to their home countries (mainly Turkey) when the original employment ended, but most of them stayed and a substantial number became German citizens. Now the third generation is struggling with transition obstacles. Ethnic background and cultural traditions interact as markers of social inequality and carry the risk of social exclusion from generation to generation. A new chapter of youth policy was opened in 2015 when Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the German borders to the admission of refugees from war-​torn Syria, Afghanistan and other

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Social structure and inequality

countries with civil strife and poverty. About half of the one million people asking for asylum were under age 25 (called ‘unaccompanied youth’), and many of them had to leave their parents and siblings behind. At the beginning the efforts of welcoming and integrating these vulnerable young people were supported by many volunteers, social and educational initiatives and associations in communities, which provided housing, nourishment, language and pre-​vocational training, programmes supported by the federal government. Because of the low level of educational experience, integration by schooling turned out to be difficult. The country of origin makes a big difference: 29 per cent from Syria and 40 per cent from Iraq had a secondary school certificate; one third from Afghanistan had no secondary schooling certification at all, and 50 per cent only elementary school (IAB, 2019). Though there is not enough empirical data for telling the story about the success and failure of integrating these young refugees, some basic information is available: more than 200,000 refugees were between age 18 and 25; and more than 300,000 were under age 18 (still minors). First observations show that of the refugees registered as seeking asylum in 2016, one third were given a temporary residents’ permit; about 17 per cent were expected to leave Germany in due course. The security of their situation (staying or leaving) was uncertain for two thirds of the young refugees, because the administration failed to process all applications. For the unaccompanied minors, who are more or less on their own, there are programmes for improving their employability, measures, many of which which are more like survival training than vocational preparation. Minors and young people older than 18, who are processed by communal youth agencies, live in shelters, miss their families and feel lost and isolated in the strange cultural environment. They inform themselves via social networks on the internet, which carries the risk of picking up the wrong information about changes in the integration regulations and offers. Among the children of migrants who came to Germany in search of work in the past, about one third of those who managed to finish secondary school had succeeded in entering an upper secondary school (Gymnasium); those from the small number of middle-​class families were as successful as German middle-​class children. Ethnic origin and cultural traditions appear to be less important for educational prospects than social class. For removing disadvantages due to ethnic background, structured social inequality must be deconstructed by improving the migrant families’ social and material resources and the infrastructure of schools, which poses a challenge for education and social policy. Since Germany’s enterprises face a severe shortage of skilled workers

23

Youth Prospects in the Digital Society

who graduated from VET, innovative training programmes for migrant youth are in preparation. Besides preparing them for labour market integration, measures must be accompanied by efforts to reduce widespread public hostility and discrimination. All in all, the transformation of work and the task of integrating young migrants into pathways from education to employment has instigated a new debate about the roots of social inequality in Germany.

Social class, generation and youth prospects Social inequality continues as a core feature of the distribution of life chances in neo-​liberal, post-​social democratic societies. For illuminating how social science conceptualises the coupling of social structure and young people’s life chances, we discuss prominent theoretical approaches for studying youth from a structural inequality perspective. The notion of social generations is proposed for linking the transformation of an entire cohort’s living conditions and values, and the individual agency of young people (Woodman and Wyn, 2014). In debating this approach, the issue of social inequality within a generation was highlighted. Social class was rediscovered as a conceptual tool for analysing young people’s opportunities, risks and prospects in countries with different institutional arrangements and welfare regimes (Antonucci, Hamilton and Roberts, 2014; France and Roberts, 2017). Canadian social scientist James Côté (2014) goes further in presenting a challenging conclusion to adult society. By ‘looking at the dark side of youth transitions’, he asserts that the ‘youth segment of the work force –​the youth class –​in many Western countries now constitutes one of the most economically disadvantaged groups in the entire population and very few people object to this situation, seeing it as normal and justified’ (Côté, 2014, p 540). This conclusion is an over-​generalisation, comparable to the social generation approach proposed by Woodman and Wyn (2014), that disregards the social stratification of youth, thereby failing to mirror the adult class structure and the different material and cultural resources that families provide for young people. Furthermore, neo-​liberal societies differ in their welfare regimes and youth polities, as comparisons of the UK and Germany have documented (Bynner and Roberts, 1991; Evans and Heinz, 1994), contexts which have quite different consequences for transition processes. Following in Côté’s footsteps there were several attempts at demonstrating that the neo-​liberal political economy impacts on young people’s life chances without specifying the social mechanisms

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Social structure and inequality

that generate age-​related inequality (for example, Bessant, Farthing and Watts, 2017). The general assumption is that youth in the US, UK, Australia, France and Spain, countries that differ widely in their institutional structure and welfare systems, are confronted with disadvantages in education and labour market opportunities and must cope with broken educational promises. ‘Digital Taylorism’ (Brown, Lauder and Ashton, 2011), for example, digitally controlled routine work, minimum wages and the costs of ageing populations threatens the returns to educational investments. Therefore, there is a call for a new generational contract and a policy that gives voice to the younger generation (Bessant, Farthing and Watts, 2017; see also Chapter 7). Such a plea does not take account of the fact that social inequality is not rooted in intergenerational patterns of disadvantage but in the institutions of capitalist society and its class structure. Furthermore, there is an intragenerational stratification of life chances that is linked to the huge differences in parental income and wealth. What we need is a new social contract that covers the entire life course, regardless of age or generation. For a better understanding of the consequences of social background on youth prospects we should look for mechanisms that link young people’s biography with the structure of opportunities in education and employment. The cumulation of advantages (DiPrete and Eirich, 2006) from childhood to young adulthood characterises youth from the middle and upper classes, while the lower-​class young people are confronted with an accumulation of disadvantages from school to employment. Finally, there are attempts to study the impact of a specific welfare mix on young people’s perceptions of social inequality by applying Pierre Bourdieu’s (1986) theory of class-​based habitus:  that is to say, the reproduction of structural inequality in the dispositions and beliefs of young people. The social practices that shape young people’s perceptions, values and beliefs (see Chapter 2) regarding economic, social and cultural capital, for example in the context of specific combinations of welfare sources, are related to the pathways they follow through education, employment, housing and family formation. Whereas Bourdieu’s approach is focused on the reproduction of social and economic status by means of family socialisation, life course research shows that in addition to families’ cultural capital, school, vocational and academic education have their specific impact on young people’s self-​concept, which may reduce the influence of social origin on the processes and outcome of transitions (Georg, 2016). Furthermore, Bourdieu’s theory neglects the contribution of

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Youth Prospects in the Digital Society

young people’s agency to the timing and duration of entering and leaving pathways from education to work and family formation. John Goldthorpe’s (2007) critique of Bourdieu’s theory is also pertinent in this regard: maintaining class-​based resistance to change is as much about resisting status reduction as about rising up the class ladder, hence educational and cultural achievement still tend to be rejected by a significant number of families.

Conclusion From our review of approaches linking social inequality and youth prospects we conclude that to compare the UK and Germany it is crucial to register that governments differ in their strategies for responding to growing social inequality, the changing occupational structure, the declining attraction of vocational training, and the increasing demand for academic education. While Germany continued to modernise its apprenticeship pathway by including new service and high tech occupations in the VET system since the 1980s, the UK government’s attempts to fill the gap in youth jobs by introducing VET via a four-​stage apprenticeship and vocational courses has largely failed (Ainley and Allen, 2010; Dolpin and Lanning, 2011). The mechanisms of social reproduction are still in operation. The preferences of German school graduates mirror their social background: VET is favoured by lower-​class parents and youth, with a focus on crafts and service occupations; universities of applied sciences are preferred by middle-​class youngsters aiming for office, administration, management and informatics, and social services; the upper classes enrol at highly ranked public universities for the professions (business, economics, law and medicine). The small number of students from lower-​income families are forced to choose institutions of higher education close to home or distance education, which permits them to study at their own pace at the same time as earning a living. The aspirations of the middle class to obtain an academic qualification will be reinforced because of the restructuring of the occupational system. Due to digitalisation the proportion of working-​class jobs in Germany has been declining steadily (Baethge, 2017). Middle-​class parents aim at giving their children the best qualifications possible, sending them to university with the realistic expectation that the occupational and income returns will be good. Thus, any attempt by government to redistribute the pathways in the direction of VET or

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Social structure and inequality

dual studies (vocational training and college) will be met with resistance from middle-​class parents (see El-​Mafaalani, 2020). As in the UK, all secondary school certificates and educational qualifications below the Abitur will come to be regarded as second rate. Young people with only a Hauptschule-​certificate or less will be hit the hardest, being left behind and facing exclusion from promising pathways to work, creating biographical stress. They are referred to transition programmes that do not provide regular VET certification, that is, programmes of vocational preparation with access to only a small range of unpopular crafts and service jobs. The option of further education is rarely followed because it will not compensate for earlier disadvantages in education. The risk of poverty is rising for young people who are not starting an apprenticeship or are dropping out of it. Groh-​Samberg and Voges (2014), using a SOEP sample of adolescents and young adults (ages 15–​30), show that young adults who left home survived on more limited economic resources compared to those still living at home. In the past decade, socio-​economic inequality and poverty risks that begin in childhood have been growing in significance. Despite a booming German economy, 14.7 per cent of children under 18 were poor in 2018, living in families on welfare (‘Hartz IV’), with substantial variation between the federal German states (Bundesländer) (for example, Bavaria 6.8 per cent; Berlin city state 32.2 per cent); half of them grew up in single-parent households in the large cities. Figures for the UK –​one third on average –​match most closely those for Berlin. These observations of disadvantage and privilege highlight the point that theories which paint a portrait of youth without presenting the landscape of valleys and mountains miss the living reality of young people. In order to show the extent to which social inequality characterises the landscape of youth transitions in neo-​liberal societies we compared the US and Europe and argued that path dependency influences the political strategies of societies in adapting institutions and markets to economic changes in the wake of digitalisation. The preparation for young people to become employable still depends on their social origin; the education systems in Germany and the UK are selective and contribute to the reproduction of social inequality. There is a cumulation of advantages for young people with a privileged family background who enter academic pathways. Higher education has become mandatory for entering the labour market with prospects for a stable and well-​paying job. In Germany and to a lesser degree in post-​Brexit England, there is a political and cultural challenge to

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socially integrate young migrants and refugees who do not even have the chance to land an unskilled job without language and vocational training. Finally, we discussed theoretical approaches of analysing the linking mechanisms of social structure and life chances to show that general concepts of a generation fail to account for the persistence of social inequality in the transition to adulthood.

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2

Identity and social media Inequality, as discussed in the preceding chapter, is a distributional characteristic of human society supplying key markers of life chances from an early age as defined by such demographic and attributional factors as social class, gender, ethnicity, education, income, wealth and geographical location. The first signs of inequality’s considerable ramifications become evident in childhood:  kindergarten and elementary school set the scene for adolescence, where the different routes via vocational or academic education signal likely destinations in the adult labour market. This chapter turns to the individual life course attributes and life course processes from which adult identity is formed, paying particular attention to the consequences of the transition to a digital society. To what extent does the transition bring about shifts in what we want and believe ourselves to be in the exercise of our human agency and in achieving our aspirations for the future? These changes are addressed in the context of the three transformational factors of digitalisation interacting with different economic and social conditions, including growing nationalism, in mainly a European context. Our starting point is the construction of identity, focusing first on the idea of developmental stages as formulated originally by psychoanalytic theorist Erik Erikson. Next, we turn to identity as a life course resource. We then consider the transformation of the workplace and the labour market in the digital economy and the effect of these structural changes on the relationships of lifestyle, social class and identity. The chapter ends with the wider implications of the changes for young people’s communication, and solidarity in the digital age.

Self and identity The sense of self has long been of central interest in the study of human behaviour and development, embracing disciplinary perspectives ranging from history through anthropology to psychology and sociology. The concept comes in a number of forms with various extensions –​ self-​concept, self-​efficacy, self-​esteem, self-​awareness and self-​presentation –​quite distinct from each other but all bound up in the idea of identity.

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Taking for granted that the last three of these identifiers are self-​ explanatory, self-​concept sums up the central features. The two identifiers following self-​esteem express the possibility of unlimited aspiration as embodied in the notion of the ‘Ideal Self ’. Self-​efficacy is again a subjective assessment, embodying all the positive virtues of ‘can do’ effectiveness, perseverance, motivation and commitment. This is how Albert Bandura’s (1977) social learning theory states them. Self-​esteem, informed by recognition by others, supplies an overall assessment. Self thus constitutes an appraisal of who and what we are at a particular point in time. In contrast, identity involves a deeper and more reflexive appraisal of attributes that define the biographical self in terms of what is consistent and long-​lasting. A theme that arises from this categorisation is that the sense of self and consequently identity cannot exist outside the context of social relations (Goffman, 1965). We define ourselves in large measure in terms of how we believe others see us and respond to our actions. Without such an ‘audience’ of ‘significant others’ the key self-​presentational element of identity cannot exist: ‘Although personal identity consists of unique identifiers and an individual narrative, it is social and institutional in origin’ (Owens, Robinson and Smith-​Lovin, 2010, p 479). In these terms, identity is a concept that can serve the purposes of many theories as distinctions can be drawn between generic identity and the more specific forms identified with occupation, politics and lifestyles. Both types interact with constructs that relate to other features of individual functioning and presentation such as self-​concept, self-​ awareness and self-​esteem, and particular features of personality such as motivation versus lack of it, aspirational versus apathetic, and energetic versus lazy. Geographical location and culture similarly fall into this category of identity refinement –​German nationality by region, for example Bavaria as opposed to Saxony, or England as opposed to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. A young person moving from the family through education to work is thus at the centre of a continuous transformation related to the need for financial, social and personal resources to support the resolution of choices and decisions in steering the way to adulthood.

Stages in identity formation A continuing interest of identity theorists relates to the processes through which the foundations of adult identity are laid and in which psycho-​social stages bridge the gap between dependent childhood and independent adulthood. As formulated from a psychoanalytic

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perspective by Erik Erikson (1982), it was hypothesised that the critical stage for identity formation starts in adolescence. This is the period when individuals begin to think about what they will become as adults. The process involves resolution of developmental conflicts concerning self-​confidence, gender role, autonomy, attitudes and values. If these interacting developmental tasks are not successfully negotiated, the adolescent experiences ‘role confusion’ that may prevent full identity commitment being achieved. It was further postulated that the resolution of role confusion comes through a series of psycho-​socially driven status changes in which ‘moratorium’, of most significance here, is a period of relatively unrestricted experimentation and growth without commitment. It is during this period that educational, occupational and family concepts start to crystallise and the mature adult identity –​‘identity commitment’ –​begins to take shape. Erikson’s model originated in the early 1960s and assumed a stable society, in which a degree of continuity in lived experience could be assumed. However, conceptions of stage-​based, ordered development of identity are considered by many commentators as not adequate to reflect the range of self-​construction in contemporary (post-​modern) times. In response to the extension of the transition from school to work from the 1970s onwards, Jeffrey Arnett (2000) proposed a new psycho-​ social stage, ‘emerging adulthood’, in which identity commitment was postponed. During this period, progression, via the traditional markers of adulthood, such as occupation, partnership, family formation and financial independence (Settersten and Ray, 2010) were put on hold. Emergent adults, who may be well advanced into their 20s, do not see themselves as fully adult while maintaining part-​or full-​time dependency on their parents. Moreover, they relate to them more like friends rather than the authority figures of adolescence. The popular long-​lasting TV series Friends epitomises the mix of flat sharing, relationship, commitment (for some), parental dependency and angst, of attractive young people nearly adult but not quite. Therefore, full identity achievement might not be expected for all of them much before age 30. However, this approach too has been challenged on a number of fronts. Hurrelmann and Albrecht (2014) argue that a new standardised stage of development, extending through what would physically be characterised as ‘young adulthood’ or ‘post-​adolescence’, fails to recognise the diversity of experience and functioning of young people in relation to current trends. Bynner (2005) and Côté and Bynner (2008) similarly question further whether such postponement warrants labelling the experience as a new developmental stage through which all

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young people pass. It is better in their view to focus on the variety of socio-​economic statuses and transition pathways among young people during this period rather than impose psycho-​social uniformity across all of them. They also take much more into account the role of the vocational education and training institutions that play a major role in shaping the transition from school to work in Europe and from which occupational identity is likely to emerge. Moreover, as critics Hendry and Kloep argue in a debate with Arnett and Tanner (Arnett et al, 2011), the ‘emerging adulthood’ conception, with strong US cultural roots, appears to downplay, if not disregard, the social structural advantages and disadvantages young adults face that do not match US assumptions and experience. As we saw in Chapter 1, such factors as class, ethnicity, gender and geographical location mark out life chances and consequently the likely labour market destinations to which young people’s life courses are directed. In fact, their debate with Arnett and Tanner, Hendry and Kloep make the case for transitions and trajectories that differ in accordance with social origin and educational achievement (Arnett et al, 2011). They also suggest that in late modernity young people are characterised much more by exploring and experimenting with different lifestyles than conforming to any one of them. Furthermore, the modern economy, for example in Germany (Groh-​Samberg and Wise, 2007; Blossfeld, 2017; Schoon and Bynner, 2017), is characterised by a restructured labour market in which ‘insiders’ can take advantage of new opportunities with good employment terms while young new employees, as ‘outsiders’, are subject to extensive screening before a continuing contract is awarded. This development reflects a particular break with the past, when a standardised life course with fairly predictable secure employment outcomes was likely to be the norm from the outset (Heinz, 2003). Thus, rather than conceptualise identity in terms of predetermined stages, the more productive approach is to focus instead on the different life course trajectories on which young people embark at an early age and which the stage-​based conception fails to reflect. Such trajectories are more central to the European approach to understanding the youth life course –​also taking into account the role of different social pathways, like VET –​as moderated by the academic institutions that play a major role in shaping the transition from school to work. This is not to say there is no common ground between these positions, but simply that these pathways are largely the product of cultural experience rather than psychosocial destiny. Nor does it deny the existence of the developmental processes embodied in such experience

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or organising instruments as age markers to which policy makers pay much attention in fixing administrative boundaries for progress through pre-​adult life. The issue is one of recognising diversity and its sources, alongside regulation, in identity construction and its consequences for the distribution of life chances.

Biographical resource Accordingly, social class structures define the life chances and living circumstances, which impact on the kind of identity a young person will be able to achieve  –​defined as knowing who you are, where you come from and where you want to go. Using your identity involves deploying personal agency in marshalling the social, cognitive and emotional capabilities from which identity is made up. Young adulthood signifies the completion of the developmental processes preceding identity achievement. There are several conceptual approaches that explain how young people’s experiences, decisions and actions are transformed along the way to autonomy and independence. Increasingly the assumption is favoured that personal identity is constructed in a biographical narrative that is related to changing social and institutional contexts (Heinz, 2009a; Owens, Robinson and Smith-​Lovin, 2010). Thus, identity develops in the process of self-​affirmation and self-​reappraisal in relation to the different domains of life: family, community, nation, education, work, health and social networks. The process occurs in situations with interpersonal expectations and cultural meanings (values and norms) that demand action implying self-​presentation, goal-​achievement and sometimes decisions. For young people, choices between pathways are linked with questions about the range of autonomy and restriction available concerning individual aspirations and social recognition. The life course outcomes of decisions affect personal identity; failure creates self-​doubt and requires a reasonable narrative of reasons and excuses. Accordingly, for young people the construction of adult identity as traditionally understood is ultimately achieved by resolving the conflict between autonomy and dependence on parents with legislative ascriptions such as age of maturity and the citizenship accompanying it. Because of the culturally accepted range of explorations (‘moratorium’ stage), young people are permitted and required to find out which ‘life scripts’, as Marlis Buchman (1989) describes them, are adequate in situations of cooperation, contest, challenges and risk. That is to say that young people draw on the scripts that are necessary for participating or

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withdrawing and for not losing face vis-​à-​vis significant others and in variable institutional and communication contexts, Facebook included. Because of its biographical roots, identity is thus intimately connected to experiences of success and failure linked to social commitments and various life tasks and challenges which may no longer map on to those of the past. Today this changed context of achieving adult identity concerns us, comprising as it does communication, self-​presentation and performance through social media. In our new media-​dominated world, digital networking becomes the centre of lifestyle management and social recognition for the majority of adolescents and young adults. Thus, in what amounts to biographical continuity, decisions are all about maintaining, preserving and strengthening identity, linked to ‘affective forecasting’; that is, optimism in face of possible failure. According to Nobel prize-​winning behavioural economist Daniel Kahneman (2011), setting reasonable goals for adulthood carries the likelihood of life satisfaction and well-​being.

Impact of digital society To summarise, the accelerating social and cultural changes that characterise the shift from a knowledge society to a digital society (with the rise of artificial intelligence and robotics) have been creating uncertain futures with new challenges for identity construction. These are in addition to the challenges that have been building since the collapse of whole swathes of traditional industries and forms of employment since the 1980s. Parents’ protective response is to stress and support higher education attainment. The labour market requires flexibility. And employers demand continual replacement of obsolete skills either by the workforce upskilling through lifelong learning or by recruiting new people (or robots) who have the relevant skills to fill the gap. In such a world, the young person needs to become an agent for observing the principles of fairness and of human rights themselves, especially in employment. The exploitative ethos of the first Industrial Revolution  –​manufacturing, and the Victorian sweatshops that became part of it –​hangs heavy over the new digital revolution we are witnessing today (Meyer, 2010). In the globalised post-​modern, post-​social democratic world, becoming an agent for one’s biographical future means life planning that demands management skills for coordinating time and relationships and keeping track of long-​term perspectives (Brandstädter and Lerner, 1999).

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For young people from lower-​class and non-​indigenous backgrounds acquiring such management skills may turn out to be an illusion because they lack the social relationships, economic resources and access to good basic and further education. A middle-​and upper-​class origin facilitates the construction and preserving of identity with a focus on capability that implies goal-​directed management skills and pragmatic exploration of opportunities (Sen, 2001; Hurrelmann and Albrecht, 2014). These considerations raise some issues of identity preservation which have become increasingly problematic in the era we are entering now. Technological change in the past tended to produce major restructuring of work accompanied by social and economic upheaval. Thus, the closure of much heavy industry, from coal mining to ship building, coupled with the movement of manufacturing to the Far East, fuelled the economic crises of the 1970s and 1980s. The labour market at that time was consequently transformed with little indication of what was to follow it. This was more the case in Britain than in Germany, where the exercise of corporate responsibility and job-​creation programmes meant that among young people the effects of the 2007/​2008 banking crisis and of unemployment were largely resisted. In Britain, a permanently damaged economy was the consequence that helped fuel the alienation from the political establishment and stimulated the belief in the supposed antidote of Brexit. Where common ground can be found is in a restructured labour market with quite different prospects from that of the years preceding it, which we consider next. Most of what we see in lifestyles, consumption and employment is technological change driven by digitalisation at an ever-​increasing rate. The most recent manifestation, and of central significance for identity, is seen in the development of artificial intelligence and robotics, put to use by global IT and service corporations like Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon. The consequence is promised to be massive change not only in the nature of work and the role of individuals within it but in the contracts (or lack of them) under which they are employed. In this scenario, artificial intelligence promises to model and replace not only what were at one time skilled jobs but a whole range of professional services from law to architecture. Robotics comes into play in such simple examples as frictionless shopping, where a whole job category of employees (cashiers) is wiped out in favour of digital scanning. As such possibilities increasingly extend to every element of business practice, the scope for human involvement becomes increasingly limited. Even stocking of shop shelves will become automated

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and ultimately the whole system becomes self-​managed via robots efficiently managed by artificial intelligence. In such scenarios the use of human intelligence will be restricted to little more than the design and programming of digital devices. In formulating a ten-​year prediction of where the labour market is heading, in identity terms, Levy and Murnane (2004) pointed out that Adam Smith’s division of labour between people and machines in relation to different elements of the industrial process is now a divide between people and computers. And there is a further division within human labour itself –​this time between those who can and those who cannot do the work needed in an economy based on digitalisation and computers. Bridging this divide involves more than ensuring that the affluent and the poor have access to the same hardware and software. It involves rethinking education and training: digital devices in Kindergarten, programming in High School, and a dominance of IT-​related disciplines at University. Questions then arise as to what impact such a development is likely to have on identity. Levy and Murnane’s (2004, pp 1–​4, 157) scenario involves identifying: ‘what tasks are best carried out by computers: what work is left for people to do and what skills are needed to do it’. The implications for identity development of such a transformed labour market and workplace and what becomes a cultural transformation are considerable, as we shall see –​but first we look at their impacts on communications.

Digital employment Since the transformation of the economy following the banking crisis of 2007/​08 and the upheavals in the labour market, there has been a major shift towards a ‘gig economy’ where contracts of employment with long-​standing negotiated terms are replaced by quasi ‘self-​ employment’ in which employees become ‘partners’ through their role as ‘subcontractors’. In such an arrangement even the control of their working activity is managed by agencies for the tech firm that actually employs them. The digital features of these enterprises, located in companies in the US, involve the use of ‘apps’ which control every aspect of the work process while dispensing with such established employment benefits as time off for illness, annual leave, pensions and retirement. The key objective is maximising flexibility and minimising wages in that contracts are short-​term and casual with variable worktime, if any work at all. The ultimate example, taking the flexibility principle to the limit, is ‘zero-​hour contracts’ where there is no guarantee of work while the

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agency operates on the principle of ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’! Such practice offers globalising benefits in the ease with which companies can close down operations if they want to downsize or move some or all of them to another country if the opportunity cost looks right. In the meantime, ameliorative terminology terms such as ‘partnership’ and ‘self-​employed’ are used to describe conveyor belt/​Taylorism levels of exploitation of the kind with which the first Industrial Revolution began. Excellent accounts of such systems as testaments to the growth of industrial insecurity, and their implications for the future of identity and the wider society, are given in recent books. As argued initially by Guy Standing (2011), the ‘precariat’ supplies a new basis of stratification cutting across the traditional status distinctions identified with social class as traditionally understood. Such living conditions are characterised by in-​and-​out of unemployment (posing as self-​employment), lack of security and basic labour rights, and no representation through collective bargaining because of non-​recognition of trade unions by the employers. Standing (2011) goes further than this in seeing disastrous consequences of such developments for society through alienation, poverty, lack of security and a new form of virulent nationalism of the kind reflected in the UK Brexit referendum result, and in the US election of Donald Trump as President. What we see are deeply divided populations who express their deprivation and fears of the future by following populist politicians and movements and reading ‘fake news’ as real news. Young people, while still in education, were rarely directly exposed to the consequences of such labour market changes, except at a relatively minor level –​holiday work and so on. But even holiday jobs have been steadily disappearing as whatever casual work remains tends to be mopped up by out of work adults. Moreover, the moment their educational programme is completed, young people are confronted by a radically different labour market from that of their parents as school leavers. The new stratification of life chances extends across previous social class boundaries, with most graduates increasingly subject to it at least at the beginning of their occupational careers; though employment perspectives for those with IT and management skills are much better than for the less qualified. Young people are confronted with a future where ideas of career or occupationally based identity will become increasingly questionable. What will matter most is finding work of any kind, accepting any terms in doing it and investing in lifelong education to reverse its effects.

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Recent research goes more deeply into the experience and legislative framework in which the precariat is forced to operate. In Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-​Wage Britain, James Bloodworth (2018) reports in graphic, at times harrowing, detail the ways in which four forms of the UK gig economy underpin the new labour market: Amazon delivery factory in the Midlands; social care in Liverpool; insurance company in South Wales; and Uber, the web-​managed taxi booking service, in London. The picture, in terms of the attitudes expressed by employers, is more in the nature of the first Industrial Revolution than this one. The first and last of the four examples are particularly informative. As in the one-​time London dockyard system in which the ‘lump’ dockers signed up for any work each day and, if they were lucky, were selected for some. There was no security in having any employment from one day to the next or earning any money on which the family could depend. As noted previously, the critical feature of the new industrial model is the attempt to label all employees as self-​employed, who then sign on with an agency that supplies them to the company that needs them. This means the company is free to dispense with any employment contract obligations; the ‘just-​in-​time’ workers are nothing but a component of a platform. Picking up this last point, an equally fascinating account from a legal perspective comes from Jeremias Prassel (2018), who looks at the promises and perils of the gig economy. He sets out to challenge the cosy assumptions of many employers in the gig economy driven by the vast earnings possible from digital sales, while treating the workers who deliver the products on which such wealth is based in a manner little short of contemptuous. He argues that governments abdicate from supporting their labour forces by failing to recognise existing legislation under which many of the employment practices in the gig economy break the law. A successful court case in the UK recently taken against the Californian taxi company Uber proved that its drivers were not self-​employed but employees of Uber. Therefore, rescinding their employment rights was illegal. It remains unclear how widespread the practices of the gig economy are in Britain and in Germany and what is happening to the identities of those young adults exposed to them. It is likely that the job start experiences are affecting identity by strengthening the belief that success in life depends on luck, social networks or on huge effort. Is it a case of familiarity outweighing dissent and the risk of unemployment leading to the attitude of ‘anything goes’? Nevertheless, as in Germany between World Wars I and II, deprivation on a massive scale can bring about a turning to national identity as an emotional response, or to

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totalitarian reactions, as the UK Brexit referendum and the populist elections across the whole of Europe have been revealing.

Digital communication Goffman’s (1965) metaphor for the self as ‘staged performance’ reflects the expression of identity as having particular force in relation to one of the most significant shaping influences on contemporary social life and lifestyles: electronic social media. The dominance in communications of such social media as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have opened up a whole new world of social interaction initially through young people of mainly university age and then across the age spectrum. The range is from middle-​aged and older adults at one end to children at the other, down to Facebook’s age limit of 13 but in reality much younger. The question still arises, however, as to whether anything comparable to Goffman’s ‘back stage’ (for reflection) as opposed to ‘centre stage’ (for performance), that is, free of social interaction, of the kind essential to effective adult communication is available in social media. The analogy of a new world is telling because in the wider reaches of such media, as used in social networking, the construction of a new identity or performed identities takes on new meaning and is in principle limitless. In the UK, Nicola Ellison and colleagues (2006) named the key features of computer-​mediated communications (CMCs), as selective self-​presentation, honesty, deception and trust. Selective self-​presentation A degree of selection is implicit in self-​presentation, as in any communication, but with the elimination of physical cues –​except when offered in the form of photographs  –​gender, age, language and skin colour may be missing or manufactured to communicate whatever facet of identity suits the sender. Each participant engaging with others in such a network for the first time can thus be ‘masking’ what is private, personal and negative by projecting a persona which may or may not correspond to any meaningful representation of the identity they really have. Such masking goes to the extreme in multiple identity construction –​that is to say, involving not only the modification of certain features of one’s own true identity, as part of impression management, but also the construction of a number of completely new (imagined) identities. These may be modelled on different types of ‘ideal self ’ fantasised to serve the needs of particular social situations or commercially as part of marketing ploys.

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Honesty and deception The most problematic and notorious feature of CMCs, and the most prominent in online social networking, is the facility for deception, for which the social network has unlimited opportunities. Can the message and its source be trusted? Deception can vary from relatively harmless adjustment of reported personal features, within the bounds of reasonable fantasising, to self-​presentation driven by ulterior motives of personal gain, dominance and persuasion. The internet is full of stories of young people persuaded to engage in relationships leading to sexual activity with predatory adults pretending to be children, or adults persuaded to part with their money in an entirely plausible ‘scam’. These examples may be regarded as just the tip of the iceberg, with wide variations between merely personal let-​downs and criminality. To counter the damage done by the latter, ‘warranting’ has been introduced by some networks. A warrant guaranteeing authenticity is the network membership requirement and can lead to exclusion when the guarantee is not met.

Psychological effects As with face-​to-​face communications such as focus groups, or by telephone or Skype, as in conferencing, the social context contributes to the shaping of the identities of the young people taking part in it, with sometimes adverse psychological effects. Thus, network members can gain the advantage of contact with potential role models in changing behaviour and attitudes or suffer stress from feelings of inadequacy and exclusion from a world they feel they cannot join. In contrast, other members of the network may be using the opportunity to boast about their own achievements. More generally, both negative and positive emotions can be released by the online exchanges that, when recovered electronically, members can live to either savour or regret. Online bullying, often based on member ‘likes’, can also become endemic with sometimes disastrous consequences. Anonymous ‘trolls’ can gain satisfaction by laying the foundations of self-​hatred and despair in other vulnerable members​ leading to identity devaluation. Social media and the networks generated by users reflect the part of identity bound up with social relations. Identity has a wider scope than this in linking not only to relationships between individuals but to those other elements of experience and circumstance that locate and identify the individual in a broader societal sense. Nationality, football

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teams, social clubs, political parties and religious communities are just a few examples of the way in which an individual locates themselves in the broader societal context. These identifications are at heart a form of narrowing of the context implying rejection of others. Football supporters and fan clubs will therefore have no doubts about where their affiliations and loyalties lie when spending time and money each weekend and beyond watching their team play. Their affiliation is broadcast by the colours of the team prominently displayed on their scarf or shirt, also as a public sign of demarcation. Such affiliation and loyalty, passionate as it may be, also goes wider than locality, clearly extending to nation but generally in a less committed way. Most individuals living in Britain or Germany will use the label ‘British’ or ‘German’ to distinguish one national affiliation rather than another. At the same time, they will make variations within this classification in terms of region and its governance, such as Bavaria versus Saxony or England versus Wales. At one time wars could be fought on such distinctions. And although such conflict is much rarer now, the idea of local culture, dialect and identity still has enough salience to generate strong emotions, and as the need arises, action to stand up for it. Teenage gang violence in the neighbourhood, with its counterpart in knife crime, promoted through social networking is a particularly disturbing example. Looking across Europe there are wide differences between the Nordic, central and southern European societies in providing institutionalised guidance, material resources, education systems and employment regulations for supporting the younger generation (Leccardi, 2006), as we shall see in the following chapter. This justifies the degree of hesitation in constructing a ‘European identity’ and for doubts among young people whether the EU has the capacity to balance the vast inequalities in the member states and across Europe. A European identity would consist of two components:  a civic and a cultural dimension, the former refers to common institutions and regulations, the latter to a sense of shared universal values, with regional and national differences:  ‘united in diversity’. A  sense of collective identity in the early years of the European Union was considered essential to building cooperation and cohesion. But under political pressure stimulated by the UK move towards Brexit, the US election of Donald Trump as President and the growing resistance to immigration linked to policy initiated by Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany, this kind of solidarity has now become increasingly elusive.

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Conclusion At a time of technological change accelerating at an unparalleled rate, growing social inequality and increasing resentment against migrants, mobilising local nationalism, this chapter raises as many questions as it answers. The shape of identity can be seen as both reflecting a transforming society and a mark of continuity. This is a dynamic conception couched in a biographical narrative that is related to changing social and institutional contexts involving self-​affirmation and self-​reappraisal in relation to the different domains of life, on the route to resolving the conflict between autonomy and dependence. More proactively, there are few aspects of human endeavour unaffected by identity from the family background and relationships from birth to the work people do or the lack of it, through education, health, politics and lifestyle. Will identity be left untouched by a situation where technological progress overtakes the science fiction that attempts to predict it? As we shall see, through the chapters to follow, the internet symbolises more than anything else the transformative power of the digital society we have now entered and hints at, if not signals, the role of identity in it. Broadly in this chapter we have considered the meaning of identity –​first, theories of how it develops, what it comprises and how it functions. The next step was to map the main features of digital change and look at its impact in relation to employment. This final section attempts to pull together the implications of what we have learned, the gaps to be filled –​including the generation gap –​and where we may be going next. Employment and the political response to the power of global corporations stand out as the most challenging area of digital impact on identity. The gig economy favoured by the global companies, currently driven by developments in artificial intelligence, presages a world where more and more routine work tasks are taken over by robots supported by computers; in the not too distant future a large number of occupations are unlikely to exist or possibly will be replaced by new ones yet to be conceived or created. This inevitably questions whether there are any prospects for the younger generations to enter occupational careers as conventionally understood. Such a possibility destroys one if not the main core of adult identity, especially for men, and increasingly for women; so what is there to replace it? Solutions clearly lie with restructuring education currently working to a class-​based template that reproduces social inequality and had lost much of its relevance to contemporary society some time ago. Lifelong

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learning will be needed to drive a curriculum directed at preparing for sustainable competences for a productive life and committed citizenship, in which political education rather than lifelong employment will play an essential part. Such a prescription assumes of course that the democratic structures, comprising national and EU governments, can ensure that the benefits of digitalisation are shared rather than used to line the pockets of the shareholders, top entrepreneurs and managers who exploit it most.

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3

Youth and Europe Many political and economic decisions of the European Union are affecting young people’s living and learning circumstances in all member countries, though not in the UK after Brexit. Therefore, this chapter outlines the basic components of the European Union and the strategies of the European Commission for improving the living conditions and prospects of young people. Since their attitudes towards the EU and its institutions determine how the younger generation will become active in supporting and criticising its policies, we also look at young people’s perception of the EU and the effects of its youth policy, with a focus on the UK and Germany. The EU provides a single market with a free exchange of goods, services, capital and people. The EU has been a work in progress, without a master plan:  From its inauguration as the ‘Economic Community’ in a ‘common market’ 60 years ago with the Treaty of Rome, its members grew from six (France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) to 28 states in 2018; the UK (and Ireland and Denmark) joined in 1973. The current European governance system with a multilevel structure was established by the Maastricht (NL) Treaty in 1992. A common currency, the euro, replaced 12 (of 28) national currencies in 2002. The euro is supervised by the European Central Bank, which regulates the monetary policy. The institutional setting of the EU consists of two legislative bodies: the European Parliament (in Strasbourg, France), representing the member states’ citizens, and the European Council (in Brussels, Belgium) of the heads of state, representing the member states’ governments. The executive agent of the Union is the European Commission, with the EU’s most visible politician, its new President Ursula von der Leyen from Germany, which implements policies and ensures compliance with European laws, for example in environmental protection or agricultural issues. Finally, the European Court (in The Hague, the Netherlands) has supremacy over the national laws and decides legal disputes in and between member states. The integration of 28 countries under the umbrella of an economic, political and cultural union is a delicate project, with ups and downs in the perception and support of the member states’ leaders and citizens.

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The belief in the EU and the trust in the euro are fragile and are becoming weaker in the wake of the rise of neo-​nationalistic, right-​ wing parties which are driving anti-​EU sentiments. The Swedish social scientist Göran Therborn (2000, p 258) observed 20 years ago that ‘the main alternative to a true European belief is not rejection but indifference’. The enthusiastic exclamation ‘I think European, therefore I am’ in the 1980s, gave way to ‘When thinking of Europe, I’m losing my sleep’ in 2010. There are 90 million people aged between 15 and 30 in Europe who are on different pathways to adulthood; 13.7 million of them are not in education, employment or training. This raises the question whether and how the vast variations between European nations regarding young people’s life chances and well-​being can be reduced to a single European framework of youth policies. For understanding the history and future of the EU, two aspects of political integration should be distinguished: the European Union as a political community based on shared laws and procedural rules (the market issue) and as an ensemble of culturally and ethnically diverse member states (the identity issue). Tensions between membership states and the EU tend to arise when shared values and rules (for example, human rights and freedom of the press) are put into question or are not followed because of a budget crisis or rising nationalism. Furthermore, there is fading tolerance of cultural diversity in the context of the refugee crisis. The UK and some member states in Eastern Europe (Poland, Hungary) are following a path to a revival of national self-​ determination and possible independence from the EU and the euro, which in the case of the UK has been accomplished (Brexit). Despite these divisions, the EU provides the cross-​b order, international socio-​political and economic context for young people’s opportunities in education, employment and family formation, with the aim of equalising the living conditions, institutions and value orientations in the 27 (now minus the UK in 2020) member states. For a decade, there have been alarming signs of Europe falling apart into autocratic states, such as Hungary and Poland, financially troubled states in the south such as Greece, Spain and Italy, with stable democracies and economies in Scandinavia and Germany, in close collaboration with France, as driving forces of European integration in the centre. The process of falling apart reached its climax with Britain’s decision to finally leave the EU by January 2020. Further strain on the integrative tasks of the EU comes from the rise of popular, right-​wing movements and parties which want to reclaim national sovereignty. For example, elections in Austria and Italy in 2018 led to a shift to the right, though

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disrupted by a recent move to the political middle, and to a dominance of EU-​sceptical populists. Many observers of European institutions and politics see a fundamental crisis of the integrative capacity of the EU in a period of intensified globalisation and international migration which have become the project plan of right-​wing movements and parties for attracting disaffected citizens. Neo-​nationalism driven by the lower middle classes, the conservative petit bourgeoisie, has become popular also in the alienated quarters of the working class all over Europe and has spurred exit propaganda. The effects of these disruptions on young people’s living and learning conditions, mobility intentions as well as trust in the problem-​solving capacity of the EU institutions will be discussed later. The fear of a threat to national identity has been spreading in Europe, pushed by two forces:  the ongoing process of integrating Eastern European states into the EU and the waves of refugees and immigrants since 2015. This state of mind and political agenda is most popular in the four ‘Visegrad states’ (Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic) that want to defend their Christian heritage and national sovereignty against the refugees and the EU Commission. On the continent, in southern states, and even in Scandinavia, neo-​nationalistic parties are supported by up to a quarter of voters who are attracted by their populist messages of national identity being in danger and Islam threatening their cultural heritage. In Germany, the right-​wing anti-​EU party (Alternative for Germany, ‘AfD’) and the conservative regional party (Christian Social Union, ‘CSU’), for example, agree that Islam does not belong in Germany. In the UK, the now defunct UK Independence Party (UKIP) and Brexit supporters share a similar mission: less migration and full independence from EU institutions. The question arises as to whether the EU and its institutions are really the problem or is it the respective political elites and populist parties of the membership states. For example, in March of 2018, the small European countries (led by the Netherlands) stressed that major political decisions must be left to the nation states in the framework of the EU general rules, while France and Germany are negotiating their vision of a stronger (financial) integration. French President Emmanuel Macron spoke of a unity of differences, of a ‘multilingual Europe’, whose citizens have the chance to develop competence of thinking and understanding of the other cultures. To succeed in this process, the active participation of the younger generation in all the member states will be essential. The threatened national identity is portrayed as a dramatic invasion by strangers who are not willing to submit to the

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dominant values and rules (in German: ‘Leitkultur’, or guiding culture). This tells of a defensive and exclusive worldview; the national culture is claimed as a fortress of self-​defence. Other belief systems, such as Islam, are defined as being incompatible with the national Christian heritage. This state of public attitudes does not leave young people’s political orientations untouched, though the majority shows more tolerance than the adult population. Since Great Britain left the EU in January 2020 the remaining EU-​27 must manage the challenge of balancing the political and economic integration with the member states’ demands of relative political autonomy and cultural identity. ‘Divided we fall’ headlined The Economist (18 June 2016) shortly before the Brexit decision: ‘without Britain, all of Europe would be worse off’.

Social justice and the distribution of resources The vision of the founding fathers (Jean Monnet and Jacques Delors) –​ no founding mothers at that time  –​of the EU was not only the economic integration and collaboration of the European nations but also the desire for peace and democracy in Europe after the horrors of World War II, and the well-​being of their citizens. There were several post-​war crises, however, not as harmful for social and political integration as the collapse of the international financial market in 2007/​ 08 (the ‘Great Recession’) which hit the less economically successful nations in southern Europe very hard. Since then the economic situation has been improving slowly, combined with austerity measures and financial support by the EU and the International Monetary Fund. Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece are on the road of economic recovery that, however, has not yet substantially improved the life chances of young people. According to the EU Labour Force Survey (January 2018), the unemployment rate among 15 to 24 year-​olds in the EU-​28 was 16.1 per cent in 2018, an improvement compared to 23 per cent in 2013. However, in Italy with 31.5 per cent (35 per cent in 2013), Spain with 36 per cent (53.2 per cent in 2013) and Greece with 43.7 per cent (55.3 per cent in 2013) too many young people are still not finding a job. There is general improvement in the labour markets, but the countries in southern Europe have not been successful in overcoming their economic problems, austerity measures, or in reducing their national debts. For understanding the perceptions of young people of the European Union it is important to ask how the Great Recession,

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triggered by the international banking crisis in 2007/​08, impacted on the distribution of resources directed at young people and their families (see Schoon and Bynner, 2017). Answers are to be found in a recent study, based on Eurobarometer data, by the German think tank Bertelsmann Stiftung (2017), which compared the 28 EU member states according to six social justice dimensions for finding out how living conditions have been developing since the GR. The results are useful for documenting the extent to which the countries managed to restructure their economic and labour market policies for improving their population’s life chances with a focus on the younger generation. The dimensions for estimating and comparing social justice issues were the risk of poverty, education policy, employment, social cohesion, health and intergenerational justice. In view of the devastating shortage of affordable housing in metropolitan areas (housing deprivation, overcrowding and cost overburden) it is surprising that this dimension was missing. In 2014, 13.6 per cent of people aged 15 to 29 lived in households that had to spend 40 per cent or more of their income on housing (European Commission, 2017). This situation is getting worse and it is a serious obstacle for youth’s transition to an independent life. The dimensions of the social justice index cover foremost the risk of social exclusion due to material deprivation, followed by the fairness of the education system, for example the extent to which social class background influences school attainment, and the public expenditures for education. Further dimensions are the access to employment for native and foreign-​born people, unemployment rates by qualification, age and gender, wages and work contracts. A central issue is social cohesion, which requires strategies against discrimination by age and ethnic origin, that is, policies promoting integration, and a civic culture of welcoming refugees. The medical service system, life expectancy and public health provisions are components of the social justice index. Justice is also an issue across the life course, fairness between the generations regarding public debts:  policies for children, youth, the elderly, family, environment and pensions. The main challenge for the EU in the last decade was to reduce the spread of poverty. However, the gap between the societies in the north and south has become deeper: poverty rates in Italy, Spain, and Greece are between 30 and 35 per cent, a rate twice that of the Scandinavian countries. In the southern states, more than a quarter of children and youth are confronted with material and social deprivation.

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The Social Justice Index ranked the 28 EU member states according to the six dimensions: Scandinavian states were on top, Germany ranked seventh, the UK eleventh; and Bulgaria and Romania were at the bottom. Though Germany had the lowest youth unemployment rate (6.6 per cent in 2018) in the EU, there is a relatively high proportion of long-​term unemployed and foreign-​born job seekers who carry the risk of social exclusion. Though the EU contributes to improving the living circumstances of its member states’ populations, for example by financing infrastructure, it cannot be taken for granted that people supplement, or even transfer their commitment to their country, history and culture, and their loyalty to its political system to a supra-​national political power and its only partly democratically elected institutions (European Parliament). A study by the Friedrich-​Ebert-​Stiftung (FES) (2017) shows that the extent to which citizens trust the EU and their national institutions conveys their willingness to comply with political decisions. Less than half (41 per cent) of the EU-​28 expressed trust in the European Union, almost half of the Germans (47 per cent), but fewer in the UK with 29 per cent. The low regard for the EU by the British mirrors their sentiments connected with Brexit. Asked about the most positive results of the EU, the free movement of people, goods and services was placed at the top by more than half of the EU-​28 citizens, by almost two thirds of the Germans and half of the British. Peace in Europe was acknowledged by more than half of the EU-​28, almost two thirds of the Germans and every second British citizen. Among the European populations, trust in the EU, however, has been declining since 2014: more than half of the respondents did not believe that their voice counts, although trust in the respective national political institutions was even lower. Taking all responses together, the FES study (2017) concludes that there has been a shift from ignorance to scepticism, even rejection of the EU. However, the younger people are more optimistic than the older citizens about the future of their country and the opportunities offered by European integration. A promising sign is that young people tend to see the EU more positively:  70 per cent regard their country’s membership in the EU as an asset in the globalised world, and 43 per cent see Europe as promoting their personal prospects for education or employment. Social inequality also contributed to the assessment: the higher the level of education, the greater the trust in the European Union, not least because the well-​ educated are in a better position to use the opportunities of an open education and labour market.

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Youth unemployment and poverty ‘Youth without work –​Europe’s wound’ headlined the leading German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung on 1 September 2016. There has since been a general improvement of the labour market in most EU countries in the north which, however, has not yet reached the employment opportunities of young people in the south. The number of unemployed youths declined only a little in Greece, Italy and Spain, where people continue to suffer from the impact of the financial crisis; in Greece almost every second young person and in Italy every third is looking for work. Despite financial programmes (for example, the EU Social Fund) for job creation and education, the EU average of unemployed young people under 25 was 15 per cent in 2018. The highest rate was in Greece with almost 40 per cent, followed by a third in Spain and Italy, while it was much lower in the UK (11.3 per cent) and in Germany with 6.2 per cent (OECD, 2019). The proportion of NEET among those 15 to 24 years old was 16.7 per cent in the EU-​28 in 2017, 7 per cent in Germany and 10 per cent in the UK, representing a serious transition problem of social participation and well-​being. By introducing tighter work protection rules the European Commission intends to combat the ‘gig economy’ (see Bloodworth, 2018), a deregulated area of employment in which many young people are working, in jobs without a contract, and with no regular salary, no social benefits and irregular work hours. The financial crisis of 2007/​08, which led to the world-​wide Great Recession and the risk of an unravelling of the European Union, has been affecting young people’s living conditions and future opportunities. Therefore, the European Parliament and Commission called for a restructuring of the European Framework for Cooperation in the youth field in the period of 2010–​18 (European Commission, 2012, 2015) and for measures responding to the needs of young people in all member states. The Youth Strategy programme will be continued until 2027 with the goal of setting up national platforms for coordinating EU youth policies. Unemployment and NEET mean that young people are hampered in all dimensions of their transition to an independent shaping of their life course  –​instead, they must rely on the family. In the EU-​28, three quarters of males and two thirds of females aged 20–​24 were still living with their parents in 2017. The age of leaving home varies by country, for example Italy 30, UK 24.4, Germany 23.7 and Sweden 21 (European Commission, 2018b.) In all countries, young women

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leave home about two years earlier than young men (at age 25 versus age 27). In the south of Europe many young adults are searching for a job in another country, especially the well-​educated. The countries in the south and east of Europe are not only suffering under a dismal economy, but also from a brain drain. Some of the young people who stay are slowly losing confidence in the future and drift toward nationalist opinions and to the social side of the precariat. To improve the situation of disadvantaged young people, the European Parliament’s and Commission’s objective is to ‘create more and equal opportunities for all young people in education and in the labour market and promote the active citizenship, social inclusion and solidarity of all young people’ (European Commission, 2015, p 16). The EU’s programmes for finding out which initiatives and solutions that are guided by the strategy of improving young people’s prospects will be summarised and discussed, with a focus on Great Britain (before Brexit) and Germany. What is the evidence for action, who are the main players, how are young people given a voice and how are reforms implemented? First of all, in view of the consequences of the Great Recession for the life chances of young people, the EU set up a ‘Youth Guarantee’ in 2013, a ‘good-​quality offer for all young people up to age 25 of a job, continued education, and apprenticeship or traineeship within four months of leaving education or becoming unemployed’ (European Commission, 2015, p 52). This pledge sets a high standard in which implementation depends on the state of the economy, labour market organisation, and the youth and social policies of the member states. Success is not in sight in southern European countries, where unemployment is still extremely high; almost half of the young people are looking for a job (Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2017; European Commission, 2018b). Reports by the EU emphasise that action plans and their implementation are evidence-​based; regular surveys are to accompany youth policy making (dashboard of 41 indicators) and are monitoring the Youth Guarantee. A cooperative framework of European nations aims at actions for eight life course dimensions defining the transition to adulthood: education and training, employment and entrepreneurship, health and well-​ being, participation, voluntary activities, social inclusion, youth and the world, and creativity and culture (European Commission, 2015, p 8). The Youth Report states that the contemporary cohort is better educated than young people in past cohorts, but the economic crisis and austerity measures have created new social divisions. The EU-​28 participation rate in tertiary education rose to four tenths in 2015 from

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one third in 2005. There was an extraordinary increase in Greece, where the participation rate jumped to more than 40 per cent in 2010 from 10 per cent in 2005 but declined again to 18 per cent in 2015. This indicates a transition pattern in uncertain economic times: young adults opted for higher education as an alternative to unemployment. As with all other indicators, there is much variation across the member states: the rate is less than one third in the UK and almost 60 per cent in Denmark. In the UK, there is means-​tested support available, but the rising fees for higher education have a discouraging effect on students with lower-​class backgrounds. The level of educational attainment is reflected in the rates of unemployment, temporary contracts and poverty. The extent to which disadvantages are accumulated is a mechanism of social reproduction that corresponds with the respective societal structure of inequality (see Chapter 1). The gap between the better educated and successfully employed and those with little education, incomplete training and uncertain job prospects is widening in European societies.

The wider benefits of the EU youth agenda In view of the drift towards neo-​nationalist, populist and ethnocentric/​ xenophobic policies in several EU states, it is mandatory to support young people to develop a political consciousness, combined with historical knowledge about the post-​war efforts to establish a peaceful Europe with free movement across borders, based on principles of democracy and human rights. In the wake of the Great Recession confidence in democratic politics and institutions declined most in countries with the highest level of youth unemployment (Janmaat, 2017). A core EU measure to enable young people to develop an open mind and possibly a European identity is the Erasmus programme, named after the Renaissance humanist scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469–​1536). It offers a travel-​and-​learning experience in the variety of European cultures and different ways of life. The Erasmus programme for student exchange was established in 1987 and was extended to ‘Erasmus Plus’ in 2014, intending to improve strategic partnerships in the mutual recognition of all kinds of formal, non-​formal and informal learning among membership states, for pupils, apprentices, trainees and adult education. It was also intended to promote a European identity, beyond the European passport. Erasmus has been highly successful: from its start in 1987 to 2014, 522,000 German students, mainly BA candidates, went abroad for

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3–​12 months with an Erasmus fellowship. In the UK 40,000 students benefited from Erasmus in 2015 (British Council). Changing places is supported by the European Qualification Framework that facilitates comparing national qualification systems on eight levels sorted by knowledge, skills and responsibility and autonomy. This framework runs the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS), a mutual recognition of grades. The experience of living and studying in a foreign country also promotes interpersonal encounters; according to the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Erasmus fellows found foreign partners (27 per cent) twice as often than students without exchange experiences. There were €15  million allocated for Erasmus for the period from 2014 to 2020. There is a strong demand among German and British students for a slot in the Erasmus binational programme, a learning visit in a selected European country that lasts four months on average. Many students see such a learning experience as a component of their curriculum vitae, facilitating their careers. The EU also promotes young people’s mobility; there are other migration pathways and groups in addition to the mobile student, for example graduates looking for a job or working abroad, as well as lower-​skilled young adults, such as from Poland to the UK (King et al, 2016). A second important field of EU policy is promoting young people at the intersection of education and work by programmes of lifelong learning at all levels of qualification. The primary aim is sustainability of skill profiles and employability in the context of transforming work requirements. Lifelong learning has a twofold task, compensating for individual skill deficits and for failures of education policies. Participants, however, also ask for offers that provide competence in managing life course transitions –​as the results of recent comparative research in the EU show (Parreira Do Amaral, Kovacheva and Rambla, 2020). In the field of employment, the Youth Guarantee implementation plans focused on measures reducing unemployment and NEET through an agenda for youth work. International cooperation in education, training and employment is also seen as a means for promoting social inclusion of disadvantaged youths, social mobility and providing learning experiences, as well as contacts in other cultural and social contexts. Free movement in the European labour market is an essential feature which might be lost to both young people and adults in the UK after the implementation of Brexit. A strategic framework for education and training was designed in 2009 with the objective of promoting equity, social cohesion and active citizenship. The benchmarks to be reached by 2020 comprise:  the

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rate of early school leaver to decline below 10 per cent; at least 40 per cent of those aged 30–​34 should have completed some form of higher education; at least 20 per cent of higher education graduates and 6 per cent of those in the age range of 18–​34 with an initial vocational education should have spent some time studying or training abroad. Most challenging for labour market policy is the aim that the share of employed graduates should be at least 82 per cent. It remains to be seen in which member states there has been progress in meeting these benchmarks. The European Commission proposed a ‘New Youth Strategy’ in 2018 (communication to the EU institutions, 22 April 2018) highlighting the youth policy goals of ‘engaging, connecting and empowering’. The EU Commission acknowledges that the success of implementing its proposals and initiatives by the member states has been less than expected. The level of awareness among political decision makers and target groups concerning resources and tools of the Youth Strategy remained low. The open method of coordination did not stimulate the national stakeholders, agencies and youth organisations to engage in more participation and consultations regarding EU objectives and action plans. The new Youth Strategy aims at improving cooperation across policy sectors and calls for an EU Youth Coordinator and a transparent monitoring system of implementation in the member states. This agenda will not come to life in the UK, where past governments did not see the need for an integrated youth policy. All in all, the EU cooperation framework informs the national agendas of youth policy and furthermore intends to supervise advancement by way of data collection and a structured dialogue between young people and policy makers at the communal, regional and national levels. It remains to be seen how the potential of digitalised means of communicating programmes and their implementation is used by EU agencies and the young people.

Political participation and protest The European Commission and Parliament have been concerned with providing opportunities for young people to participate in decision-​ making process on youth issues. Responding to this challenge, the EU has established several mechanisms for preparation and evaluation of youth policy in the fields of unemployment, social exclusion and consultation between young people and policy makers. First of all there is the ‘Structured Dialogue’ (European Youth Forum, 2014) for facilitating participation. This mechanism is an ambivalent institution of

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governance, because the number of participating delegates is necessarily small, and the implementation of initiatives and recommendations in the now 27 member states is difficult to measure. In ‘Being Young in Europa Today’ (European Commission, 2017), the EU announced the publication of data in the future (Flash Eurobarometer, EU dashboard indicators). A  prominent format of the dialogue is the European Youth Parliament, which held its 80th meeting in Leipzig, Germany in 2014 commemorating the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Finally, participation should be activated by the European Youth Portal, which offers online information about opportunities in the EU education systems and labour markets and allows inputs into the dialogue with policy makers. The future of European integration is linked to young people’s attachment to the democratic principles, social agenda and integration policies of the EU. About one third of young Europeans (age 15–​ 29  years) stated an interest in politics and showed a low level of awareness characterised by their participation in formal political practice, such as voting: 44 per cent of the young members of the EU-​28 voted in the last elections of the EU parliament (2014) –​38 per cent of German youth and only 18 per cent of British young people, compared to Sweden with a rate of 65 per cent. There was an increase in the electoral turnout in 2019, however: almost half of those aged 18 to 24 and two thirds of the 25 to 39 age group participated in Germany, while in the UK just a quarter of the younger group and not even a third of the older group went to the polls (European Commission, 2019). These low rates in the UK reflect young people’s doubts about policy makers’ concern with their needs and problems; they also imply ignorance about the infrastructure improvements based on EU funds and little awareness about the EU’s institutions, programmes and activities. Recent Eurobarometer (April 2018)  data shows that there is only moderate concern about the state of Europe: only half of those aged 15–​24 were interested in European affairs; again, education makes a difference: two thirds of young adults with a higher education expressed an interest in EU affairs, compared with only one third among those with little education. A look at the national picture documents a minimal level of formal participation: in the EU-​28 young people’s membership in a political party lies between 5 per cent and 6 per cent. If at all, they prefer flexible, issue-​based, informal political activities, mainly related to their living context (youth clubs, environment, housing). Managing the impacts of migration and promoting a better integration of refugees are demanded by 40 per cent of the sample

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in the EU-​28, by half of Germans and by a third in the UK. Finally, freedom of movement has priority for a third of British youth and one fifth of young Germans. Despite the mounting problems of European integration, solidarity with other countries was not on the agenda of young people: only one fifth in the EU-​28, one quarter in Germany and not even one tenth in the UK. Young people’s ideas about the future tasks of Europe comprise the promotion of critical thinking, combating ‘fake news’ and extremism: half of them in the EU-​28, two thirds in Germany and less than half in the UK. Getting useful information about working abroad is on the minds of half of the young people in the EU-​28; for young Germans it is less important, reflecting the relatively good German labour market. Initiating behaviour change in favour of the environment is seen as a task for the EU by 40 per cent in the EU-​ 28, by half of young Germans and only one third in the UK. Finally, promoting education for innovation and creativity is expected by one third of the young people in the EU-​28, but in Germany by only a quarter, reflecting its educational standards in technology and design. Regarding the feeling of a national and/​or European identity, the degree of attachment to Europe has several dimensions: knowledge, identification, activity and sentiment (see Martinelli, 2017). Knowledge and activity are rare among young EU citizens; instead a feeling of distance tends to dominate. Recent results of an online survey in seven EU countries (You-​Gov, 2017) show that most young people see the EU critically, not as a union of shared values (30 per cent), but rather as an economic alliance (76 per cent). It is remarkable that youths who perceive the EU in a positive way are also more optimistic about their individual futures. Surveys indicate that most young people are indifferent to political matters in general and not interested in party politics; though there is a minority of political activists who tend to participate in protest rallies and mobilisation, initiated by anti-​neo-​liberal sentiments (see Roberts, 2015). The spread of uncertainty, precarious living circumstances and worries about future working conditions may motivate young people to demand changes in the distribution of resources in favour of the younger generation in peaceful, but by some in more radical and aggressive ways. There are signs of resentment towards the national and European political economy, against elites who are criticised for being mainly concerned about keeping their privileges. Recent examples of political protest are the summit meetings of the G20, which tend to attract hard-​core protesters from all over Europe, most recently with violent attacks against shops and police in Hamburg in 2017.

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In Germany a critical political dialogue between the youth wing (JUSO) and adult members of the SPD developed in a months-​long process of deciding to enter into a grand coalition with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) again after having lost many votes in the federal elections of September 2017. The JUSO was against this move and succeeded in mobilising the whole party and the public for heated debates and disputes, which finally resulted in a party members’ vote to re-​enter a grand coalition with the conservatives. In the UK young people were mobilised by the Momentum movement to support Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader of the Labour Party. Political participation is possible on various levels of involvement regarding issues and forms, from signing a petition to staging a protest march and organising school strikes on Fridays, becoming a member of a labour union, a sports club or a political party. In view of the danger of the EU failing, there are grassroots initiatives in many member countries to mobilise young people via social media to support the mission of the EU and to demand reforms at the same time. A young citizens’ movement for Europe, the ‘Pulse of Europe’, initiated by two young lawyers in Frankfurt, Germany, came to life in 2016, as a wake-​up call; it organises a public rally once a month. Pulse of Europe has been spreading to many cities in Germany and in Europe with the slogan: ‘Europe must not fail!’ Political affiliations developed during the formative periods of youth and young adulthood and participation in voluntary organisations like the ‘Pulse of Europe’ are in many cases the basis of a lifelong involvement because they create links with peers who share one’s values and interests. A prominent example is the generation of 1968 who demonstrated against the war in Vietnam, attacked traditional customs in an innovative and peaceful way (‘flower power’) and changed institutional practices. This generation continued the struggle by ‘marching’ through institutions; one of them (Joschka Fischer) made a career as a leading politician of the Green Party and became German Minister of Foreign Affairs between 1998 and 2005. When asked whether they had been engaged in organised activities in the last 12 months (EU flash), almost half of the young people in the EU-​28 reported that they had not participated in any organised activity, one third in Germany and half in the UK. Sports clubs were relatively popular, a third in the EU-​28, 40 per cent in Germany and 28 per cent in the UK. Explicit political participation occurred quite rarely in the last three years: Less than half of young people voted in local elections, in regional elections not even a third and only 16 per cent in the UK. In national

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elections participation was at 43 per cent in the EU-​28, with 36 per cent in the UK and 11 per cent in Germany, where federal elections took place shortly after the interviews. In order to increase the political involvement among young Europeans, the crucial role of the EU in solving climate, economic, labour market and immigration issues, which will determine their future, must be discussed in public debates and using digital media –​and everywhere in the education systems.

EU integration and cultural diversity The urgent issue for the EU is to master the forces of disintegration: the refugee crisis, Brexit, the economic and social disparities between and within the membership states, and the trade relationship between the EU and the US and China –​and most recently, the health and economic consequences of the COVID-​19 pandemic. The ways in which this is handled and the outcomes of solving these challenges will structure the future of the younger generation. After Brexit the EU needs a new agenda that focuses on improving its member states’ cultural, economic and technological capacities for, first of all, reducing political fragmentation between and inside the EU-​27 countries and, second, to cope with the issues of climate change, digitalisation, relations with the USA and social inequality. In order to prevent a post-​Brexit paralysis, the EU and its institutions must put new life into the unique potential of a united Europe and attract young people’s interest in participating. However, the new wave of refugees from the civil war in Syria to a sanctuary Europe that erupted again in 2020 is confronting the EU with human suffering at the borders between Turkey and Greece. Supporting Greece and helping the refugees demands solidarity between the EU member states and their citizens. The force for European integration is getting weaker because of economic disruptions and political strife fired by domestic dissent. In his presentation at the Sorbonne University in Paris in September 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron highlighted the opportunity of Europe’s culturally diverse member states for advancing a mutual understanding between the citizens of European nations and for respecting their history and cultural heritage. Understanding other Europeans depends on speaking their language and on attempting an empathic recognition of their points of view. Small countries harbour an advantage; the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden are multilingual, in contrast to Great Britain and Germany. The guideline for developing attachment to the EU should be its normative framework that combines

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the universal values of freedom, security, law and solidarity, a framework that is valid in all European states and also in Great Britain.

Conclusion The European Union has been losing its integrative capacity, as evidenced by Brexit, and needs to promote political participation and the value of active citizenship among the younger generation for guaranteeing its future. We have presented an overview of the fabric of the EU and its institutions and have looked at the consequences of disruptions stemming from the rise of neo-​national forces. Based on surveys and reports about youth in Europe published by the European Commission we have discussed the distribution of opportunities and risks young people are faced with from the perspective of social justice and the consequences of the Great Recession and austerity measures for the employment situation in the UK and Germany. The EU needs a new agenda for rebalancing the relations among the remaining 27 membership states after Brexit, also with a focus on young people. It is doubtful, though, whether programmes like the ‘Structured Dialogue’ with the young generation will be implemented in the member states. However, we believe that an advance of supra-​ national attachment is possible in view of the strong support European integration is receiving from young people who value free movement and demand initiatives concerning the environment and social justice, also seeing the benefits of EU programme like Erasmus. Turning to the issue of transition to work in the following chapter, we will document how the change from the knowledge society to a globalised digital system of communication and work will affect the life course of young men and young women.

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Navigating the transition to adulthood Youth has always been regarded as a period of transition from childhood to adulthood with a wide variation in duration and social support and control by family, neighbourhood, education providers and the state. Its defining institution is the education system, its experiential space is the peer group, fun and games, and more recently social media. We understand transitions as life course events in time and social space. On their path to adulthood young women and young men are confronted with many road signs (norms and regulations) and signals (risks and opportunities) that command attention and individual responses. In view of the multiple institutional demands of education and work and the informal expectations in their family and social networks, adolescents and young adults must deal with the challenge of constructing a coherent self (see Chapter 2). Life course theory states that transitions imply a duality of social structure and individual agency in the context of social pathways (Heinz, 2009b). Their timing and sequencing, direction and outcome are embedded in structural conditions  –​the economy, the labour market, and family social background and institutional arrangements, educational and welfare systems. Variations are due to agency, for example individual characteristics –​competences, motivation, identity and life goals. Transitions unfold via turning points: entering and leaving school, leaving home, graduating, finding a job, forming a partnership, becoming a parent. The timing and duration of such life course events have become less standardised in recent decades. Today the transition to adulthood implies a period of young adulthood and spans the age between 18 (maturity) and 30 (average age of independent living). Social class, gender, ethnic origin and local/​regional opportunity structures modify the course of transitions’ trajectories, suggesting straight paths, detours and revisions of directions. Life course theory argues that focusing on a framework of the political economy of youth cannot illuminate the young person’s contribution to the transition process, which is based on their agency, employing several components of their action potential. The properties of agency are highlighted in social psychology (for example, Smith, 1999) and

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in life course sociology (Heinz, Huinink and Weymann, 2009): the capacity of managing self-​development, starting and keeping a sequence of learning going, of thinking ahead for exploring alternative routes, of coming to terms with uncertainty by ‘testing the waters’, of breaking through a circle of risk accumulation, of coordinating time-​and-​space demands in institutional and private contexts, and of showing resilience in the face of multiple challenges. Agency is rooted in the biography and is a core dimension of personal identity, as argued in Chapter 2. In principle, there are two outcomes of the school-​to-​work transition: success and failure. Both are in the eyes of the beholder: for example, the outcomes may be objectively a success but are individually perceived as a disappointment, and the same may hold true for a failure. Educational attainment, age, gender, ethnicity, institutionalised regulations, support and sanctions make a difference. For an adequate understanding of outcomes and the individual’s response it is important to distinguish between their point of view, their life perspective on the one side and the structural and institutional factors on the other. Decisions at turning points and the extent of risk taking have biographical impact because they are related to institutional contexts, guided and sanctioned by gate-​keepers and ascribed to the individual’s intentions, for example in the case of unemployment by the employment agency’s activation scheme and sanction-​based social assistance. Social selection, performance indicators and opportunities interact with individual behaviour patterns. Socially expected durations relate to chronological age and define the range of deviation from standard patterns, which highlight a stepwise progression from school to VET or academic education to employment, independent living, family formation and parenthood. Socio-​cultural modernisation has established age norms for reaching and accomplishing status changes that are less binding, for instance from student to worker. Variations by social class, gender, ethnic background and level of education are taken for granted in individualised life course regimes. Today, after graduation a rising number of young adults is confronted with lacking financial and social resources and only short-​term employment opportunities. Some are searching the labour market for promising job offers, some are staying on in education, others are trying out various lifestyles by extending the exploration period (gap year, voluntary work) and an increasing number are trapped in precarious living circumstances. European societies differ in the provisions they offer young people for managing their school-​to-​work transition successfully. While in the UK academic pathways and further education

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institutions are preferred, Germany relies on VET, universities of applied sciences and research universities.

The dual system of vocational education and training VET has been regarded as a well-​organised programme of preparing young people for skilled employment in a wide range of manufacturing, crafts, service and social occupations, based on the German-​speaking societies’ tradition of skill formation in both training firms and vocational schools –​the ‘dual system’. The schooling part of VET is state financed, while the applied or practical part comes from the training firm, which also pays the moderate apprenticeship wages that vary by occupation and increase over the three years of training. Training systems in the EU differ and can be classified into three broad types (see Allmendinger and Leibfried, 2003): corporatist (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands), state guided (France, Sweden, Italy) and market-​driven (Great Britain). The main difference between these regimes lies in the proportion of the company-​based and school-​based training that leads to an occupational qualification. Germany’s dual system is embedded in an institutional fabric of employers’ associations, state-​run vocational schools, chambers of commerce and crafts as well as the trade unions. This institutional arrangement, which evolved over 150 years, is almost impossible to transplant into other countries which do not have a tradition of firm-​ based VET. Regarding the rising prominence of academic pathways, a European VET qualification framework would provide a more balanced map for young people as a guideline for deciding between learning a trade or higher education. The widely acclaimed ‘dual system’ of vocational education is rooted in the tradition of crafts that prepared young people for employment by means of on-​the job training, supervised by a master trainer and journey man –​that is, apprenticeship. In English-​speaking societies, the vocational tradition did not gain so much acceptance; it was often viewed negatively, because of the assumption that lower-​ability youngsters were associated with this pathway. In the US, for example, career and technical education (CTE) became the preferred label for programmes linking education and the labour market, but unlike the German system it was not based on vocational/​occupational training in a firm. In the last decade digitalisation has been initiating fundamental changes in the work process and skill demands in the manufacturing

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and service industries. In Germany, the number of training firms has been declining over the past decade: among the 2.1 million firms only 428,000 (20 per cent) were offering apprenticeships in 2017 compared to 24 per cent in 2007. Large firms still offer attractive positions, but smaller firms in the crafts, hotel and restaurant business have difficulty attracting apprentices; every third training place remained vacant in 2017. There is an impending skills shortage and the chronic matching problem of applicants and VET places has intensified:  Supply and demand of training places does not fit. Compared to the second half of the 20th century, the main cause in addition to industrial restructuring is the declining number of school leavers, due to shrinking birth rates and the increasing number of university-​bound secondary school graduates. In the second half of the 20th century the VET market was characterised by a fluctuation of training places offered and the applicants’ qualifications required by the firms. The matching process is still a complex one, with state, business and labour unions attempting to maintain a delicate balance between labour market dynamics, the changing occupational structure, quality standards of the firm and the school requirements of the dual system. Similar to other EU countries, the outcome of the transition from academic education or apprenticeship to employment has become less predictable in the last decade, despite a growing shortage of skilled employees. Though three quarters of the apprentices were hired after graduating from VET, unconditional contracts were offered to only 55 per cent of them, 25 per cent got a fixed-​term contract and 20 per cent left the training firm (BMBF, 2018). In order to receive benefits, those who did not find employment after VET or college had to visit the employment agency to register as ‘looking for work’. Unemployment benefits are 60 per cent of the former salary; the unemployed under the age of 25 who still live at home receive means-​tested social benefits. In contrast to the UK, in Germany there are five pathways from school to work:  apprenticeship, vocational education, dual studies, higher education (university of applied science; research university) and vocational preparation schemes. Learning a trade is still the dominant pathway from school to work for young people in Germany. There were 2.34 million apprentices and trainees in Germany in 2015/​16 who followed either the firm-​based VET pathway or the school-​based vocational education pathway (BMBF, 2018). The occupational profiles are still strongly gendered: Young men prefer the VET pathway, their most popular occupations being car mechanic, electrical technician and IT specialist;

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young women prefer office management, medical assistant and sales occupations. Furthermore, a third of all new training contracts refer to school-​based vocational education in health, teaching, nursing and social work, where young women represent three quarters of the trainees. This trend will improve their employment prospects because occupations based on care and empathy cannot be substituted by robots. According to their school level, apprentices are sorted into different occupational sectors. Because of the rising skill demands, there is only a small range of crafts and sales positions available for young people with a low-​level school background, whereas those with a middle-​ level certificate find apprenticeships in the professions, customer services, office management and health occupations. The high-​level school graduates are trained in banking, IT, public administration or management. Not every apprenticeship will be completed successfully, though: The rate of drop-​out from an apprenticeship is 25 per cent, mainly because of grievances concerning the quality of training, work conditions, wages and prospects, mainly occurring in the hotel and restaurant, sales and craft occupations. The educational background of apprentices differs: the largest group are from the middle-​level school (42.7 per cent), whereas 27.7 per cent of the incoming apprentices graduated from a high school (university eligibility) and 26.7 per cent had a lower-​level school certificate. Thus, the VET serves as a kind of social equalisation mechanism because it is accessible to young men and women from different social classes. There is a declining number of lower-​level school leavers, however; they used to be the main recruits for the crafts, sales and commerce. On the other hand, there has been an increase in the category of middle-​level and upper-​level school graduates. Thus, most of the apprentices were young adults, the average age of which has increased from 18.8 years in 2006 to 19.7 years in 2015. Age at graduation from the VET was 22.4 in 2015. The second pathway is occupational education at a vocational school, combined with on-​the-​job experience for three years. This track is directed at nursing, health occupations, education and social services; most of the trainees are young women from middle or upper schools. This pathway has become more popular in the past decade, a trend answering to the rising demand for skilled employees in the health and social service sectors in an aging society. A third pathway with rising popularity is the ‘dual studies’, a hybrid combining theoretical education at universities of applied sciences and firm-​based practice. This recent innovation is attractive for both

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business and students alike: the firm trains its middle-​level management; the students get wages and are junior members of the organisation. The two learning components of the third pathway are connected by a public–​private arrangement of education provider and firm for a programme of four-​and-​a-​half years leading to the BA or BSc and a certified occupational qualification at the same time. There are 1,600 programmes in engineering (for example, airplane technology), economics (for example, business administration), information sciences, social work, health and education. Two institutions of higher education structure the academic pathway: universities of applied sciences, focused on regional labour markets for BA and BS graduates, and research universities with an emphasis on the professions and research-​based training. This pathway has become the most popular in the last decade because of the increasing number of graduates of the Gymnasium who are opting for academic degrees with the expectation of succeeding in the competition for interesting and well-​paid jobs. Almost all universities in Germany are public institutions which are accessible to students from less privileged families because they do not charge fees. Finally, there is a fourth pathway for low achievers, consisting of at least six months of skill-​building courses and on-​the-​job experiences, a bridge for applying for an apprenticeship. This bridge has become the main opportunity for young migrants to learn German and to move towards labour market participation. The integration of young migrants has become the main challenge for the education and employment systems in Germany since 2015. More than half of the asylum seekers were between 16 and 35 years old and two thirds were male. Depending on the country of origin, two thirds have neither certified vocational skills nor a school or college degree. According to the German VET tradition, there is no alternative way to integrate migrants other than to prepare them for occupational training by special programmes starting with language education –​at a cost of €9,000 per trainee a year. The aim of the training has been to establish an alternative pre-​VET pathway, building also on community-​based networks of small firms and vocational schools. The social and material resources of young people who leave lower-​ level school (Hauptschule) with poor grades or who have dropped out are limited. They tend to live in socially disadvantaged families or migrant families and lack networks that would provide contacts with potential training firms. Many of them are referred to the fourth pathway of transition schemes. Their passage to adulthood can be facilitated by community mentors and government agencies providing emotional

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support, access to resources and learning networks. Moreover, individual social skills must be strengthened in order to overcome low self-​esteem. Failing transitions may occur at each step or turning point of the passage to adulthood. They result from dropping out of school, college, or apprenticeship or not landing a job. Temporary and long-​term unemployment and not being in education, employment or training indicate incomplete or pending links with the labour market. Such situations signal a life course episode of precarity, where young people and their families must find strategies for adapting to precarious living conditions (returning home, social benefits, gig-​type jobs). There are several measures in the fourth pathway in Germany for recovering from failed transition from school to VET, directed at young people with low achievement or no school leaving certificate at all. There is little research on how they succeed in moving ahead to the VET pathways. The respective learning history and school record, as well as the recruiting strategies of training firms, make a difference.

Comparing transitions Data for comparing school-​to-​work transitions are available in national statistics, EU and International Labour Organization labour force surveys and OECD employment data, which supply information on participation rates in education and employment. Book-​keeping and labour market statistics, however, do not tell us much about the social mechanisms, for example the procedures and effects of gate-​keeping by institutions and the selection of applicants by employers along the road to adulthood. Therefore, we must consult longitudinal, qualitative studies and case studies that also tell us about the perceptions of cultural and socio-​economic contexts by young people with successful, precarious and failing transitions. Young people’s relationship to the labour market can be sorted into four categories: employed, unemployed, not looking for employment and NEET. The rate of unemployment is registered as the proportion of unemployed of all participants in the labour market, for ­example 21.9 per cent of ages 15–​24 in EU-​28 in 2014, the proportion varying between Spain (53.2 per cent) and Germany (7.7 per cent). A careful comparison shows that these rates are putting the unemployed and non-​participants together; students and gap years should be excluded. Apprentices are classified as employed in Germany, although they are counted as unemployed in school-​based VET systems. Such different definitions make general statements, especially about European youth in precarity, doubtful.

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There has been some improvement in the labour market situation since the Great Recession: according to the EU Labour Force Survey of 2018, the rate of unemployment among youth between 15 and 24 years was 16.1 per cent overall in the EU-​28, a substantial decline since 2012 when it was 23 per cent. The rate was 6.6 per cent in Germany (8.1 per cent in 2012) and 12.4 in the UK 2018 (21 per cent in 2012). To draw correct conclusions about the status and prospects of young people one must, for example, know the criteria for labelling people as ‘unemployed’. How are they counted? Do duration and context matter? Which criteria and requirements define eligibility to receive benefits? Another issue concerning comparability are levels of qualification. Is a German ‘master craftsman’ electrician equivalent to a British ‘BA’ with a focus on IT? The former has gone through three years of VET and has had to present three to five years of work experience before enrolling in a master’s course to pass the master’s exam. At the end of this skill-​building sequence the German electrician is permitted to manage a licenced firm (and to train apprentices). The latter has a shorter transition sequence with fewer turning points to navigate: three to four years of academic education, an examination in the selected profession and the option to continue to the MA. Very likely they will not establish a firm, but will be employed and expect a higher lifetime income. It is obvious that talking about the younger generation in general is misleading: Notions such as Generation X, Y and Z reduce variety and diversity. The structure of the youth population is complex according to their social status. Their composition differs from society to society according to their proportions in VET, academic and repair pathways, in employment/​unemployment, NEET, living at home or on their own, and it is shifting by age and gender in the transition process. There are also country differences, for example a high level of students’ labour market participation and moderate unemployment in the UK and Sweden and a low level of employment and unemployment in Germany thanks to VET. Furthermore, there exist very different post-​school constellations:  students looking for a summer job, graduates looking for employment or taking a vocational course as an alternative to unemployment, and actively searching for a job under the supervision of the Employment Agency. In addition, the respective national context –​economy and institutions make a difference, a fact observed by Roberts, Clark, and Wallace (1994) in comparing England and Germany 25 years ago (see also Bynner and Roberts, 1991). A recent study by the German Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (2019) about young people in south-​east Europe reveals how structural factors (such

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as economy, social inequality) impact on youth, who must come to terms with precarious living conditions, informal survival practices and insufficient social protection. Many intend to leave their country in order to take their chances in wealthier EU societies; they support the EU but feel politically alienated.

Restructuring of the occupational system We are witnessing a rapid shift from routine jobs in the manufacturing and service sectors to planning, management and administration in the IT and health, education and social services sectors. There is a transformation in the meaning of qualifications from work experience and occupational skills to the competence of flexibility, of lifelong self-​ improvement, to increasing the potential for creativity and innovation. This development mirrors the Silicon Valley spirit and the decline of old industries. For example, the last 173 coal mines, where once 600,000 mine workers from many countries were employed, were closed in Germany in December 2018. This disruption led to the vanishing of an entire occupation for good, but also to the establishing of new businesses in logistics and commerce instead, supported by the government, to keep the former mining community alive. The OECD (2019) reports that 40 per cent of jobs created between 2005 and 2016 were in the digital sector. To adapt to the future requirements of work, especially of less well-​qualified young people, a new jobs-​and-​skills strategy must be devised, offering social protection and entitlements for participating in skill enhancement. An extreme example of declining employment standards is crowd work on online platforms where independent solo workers do simple routine jobs on short notice, paid by the number of clicks on the computer. A journalist of the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) worked for Amazon’s platform ‘Mechanical Turk’ (named after a fake chess playing machine of the 18th century with a player hidden in the machine) for some weeks and published a report about her devastating job experience. It is remarkable that this conveyor-​belt type of work is simulating the operation of artificial intelligence (Meschede, 2018). Digitalisation will take many routine, low-​paid and boring jobs away. Nobody will regret the decline of mining and fast food-​type service jobs. But the range of jobs young people used to be able get for earning pocket money while in school or college will decline and finally vanish (see www.willrobotstakemyjob.com), as well as standard entry-​level jobs after graduation. In order to be able to compete for

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jobs with a contract in the digitalised labour market, a combination of technical, entrepreneurial and communicative qualifications is becoming mandatory. Their acquisition, however, hinges on individual initiative, for example by participating in online tutorials and in online career networks. Using a ‘smart’ watch to track one’s fitness will not suffice for coping with the job demands that involve programming, the development of smart IT systems and dealing with the challenges of AI.

Precarious transitions When moving from school to the labour market, young people enter a lifestyle of ‘urban nomads’ if, as Standing (2011, pp 65–​78) assumes, they are drifting into ‘precarity traps’ –​that is, temporary employment in low-​paid jobs. The notion of precarity initiated some studies with the intention to empirically differentiate the extent to which the assumption of a general predicament of young people in transition is reasonable. ‘Precarity’ was put forward by Standing (2011) in the wake of the Great Recession without specifying the timing, duration and extent (who is affected?) to which youth are under the spell of precarity (see Schoon and Bynner, 2017). Due to rising skill requirements and uncertain employment prospects, the risk of failing in the school-​to-​work transition is spreading, affecting mainly youth without secondary school attainment. The idea of being able to choose between pathways and of navigating through the stormy seas of education and labour markets without solid qualifications is becoming outdated when employers demand intellectual flexibility and social competence in the context of robotics and AI. Rather than designating precarity as a general youth phenomenon, research indicates that it is meaningful to understand precaritisation as a process of getting stuck in a volatile course of transition, which is experienced by a rising number of young adults, especially those who are not in education, employment or training (Alberti et al 2018; Contini, Filandri and Pacelli, 2019). From a life course perspective, it is important to know the temporal patterns, the biographical antecedents and social consequences, such as disadvantaged family background, age at dropping out of school or training, casual work, duration of unemployment and of receiving social benefits. Within and between European societies young people experience uncertain transitions in the context of different education and labour market policies and welfare mixes. Though the NEET category includes a variety of living conditions, it can serve as a reliable indicator for precarious transitions. The proportion of youth in the NEET

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category differs by age and country in the EU (OECD, 2020). Italy has one of the highest rates of young people who are in the NEET situation:  27.5 per cent of men aged 20–​24 and 29.3 per cent of women in the same age group; in the UK there are 13.4 per cent and 15.4 per cent, respectively, and in Germany 9.4 per cent and 11.4 per cent classified as NEET. The proportion of NEET increases by age in all countries and characterises young adulthood, compared to those aged 15–​19, who have a rate of less than 10 per cent because most teenagers are still in school. The risk of a long-​term NEET condition is quite high in Italy: 40 per cent of young Italians, as Contini, Filandri and Pacelli (2019) conclude from their longitudinal study, experienced NEET for at least a year. In Italy and in the countries with precarious passages to adulthood, the lack of employment opportunities is the main reason. With a long duration of being in NEET, the likelihood of discouragement is growing, combined with attempts to leave the country. Temporary situations of precarity in work and living circumstances may characterise youth transitions, but does this hold for all? To answer this question, status levels and durations of precariousness should be distinguished. There are different stop-​and-​go positions on the bumpy road to stable employment and secure living conditions, depending on young people’s social background and qualifications, as well as job opportunities and governments’ labour market and social policy. Disadvantages can be bridged by social benefits and the promotion of skill development. For instance, the Nordic and German welfare regimes are promoting an active labour market policy, requiring unemployed youth without formal qualifications to participate in education and training in order to receive benefits (for Denmark see Nielsen, Dyreborg and Lipscomb, 2019). In Germany and the Nordic countries reforms have been leading to stricter, less generous procedures for the unemployed and for becoming eligible for benefits. With the decline of unemployment in general and youth unemployment specifically the proportion of young people who are stuck in bad jobs has become smaller. Uncertain and low-​p aid employment may be a temporary circumstance of young people who are ‘in their process of transition from school to apprenticeship to work, while for others there is a high risk of continued uncertain and risky work’ (Nielsen, Dyreborg and Lipscomb, 2019, p 25). The urgent policy issue is:  how can vulnerable young people be prepared to deal with precarious periods in order to avoid lifelong effects:  ‘scarring’ resulting from educational deficits, no VET,

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substandard employment or unemployment in the transition to adulthood? Will it be possible to accumulate skills and funds and to learn from failing pathway decisions? No young people should be left behind by being excluded from life chances. The EU, post-​Brexit England and Germany have education and welfare arrangements in place with the capacity to offer second and more chances to gain a place in the volatile markets of education, work and housing. A period of precarity after graduation has an ambivalent character; for example working as a freelancer and being self-​e mployed promises an autonomous lifestyle, but substandard jobs (customer and messenger services) or dependent semi-​employment (parcel services; Uber taxi) are not a source of continuous income and lack social protection. The alternative to lifelong learning and actively acquiring skills, through participating in social media in order to stay competitive in a flexible labour market, requires resilience in situations of disappointment and failure, which is a core competence in the brave new world of digitalised work, that is, the willingness to try out and to do anything. Agency –​the capacity for building and maintaining self-​confidence against all odds  –​must be strengthened, based on recognition of achievements of all kinds, not only by the number of likes on social media. For most young adults precarity will be an episode while they improve their education and engage in training as prerequisites of landing a job. For young people who are navigating the transition to adulthood in a landscape of multiple options and uncertainties, resources and road signs must be installed with directions to socially recognised and personally fulfilling lives. Moving ahead to adulthood and navigating precarious transitions is deeply connected with the family and its emotional as well as material support  –​this is a truism. Support and understanding, however, depend on the parents’ and relatives’ solidarity, compassion and income and social ties. Unstable families and disruptive events, like illness, unemployment, separation or divorce, may create a disturbed transition context where a young person is on their own and must repair and compensate for missing support at home. Poor families tend to act in a traditional way by setting their children free after leaving school  –​‘It’s your life’  –​albeit without adequate resources and guidance. Early independence creates a risky transition, for example a fast start to cohabitation and family formation, single motherhood, low-​paid jobs and welfare dependence. This is a difficult situation for those who only have access to or are entangled in

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precarious jobs. Many do not know what will happen in the labour market in the future: You may learn a trade without any prospects.

Social class and the welfare mix The need to earn a living in the transition process depends on families’ social and economic background, educational level and the extent of welfare benefits provided by the government. For a realistic assessment of the kind and duration of precarity for young people experiencing the process of a social reproduction of inequality, it must be looked at in the context of social class differences (Antonucci, 2018). Depending on the respective welfare mix –​that is, the availability of family, state and labour market resources –​the experience of precarity varies in duration and impact on youth transitions. Gig jobs accompany precarious transitions; working for low wages on a short-​term or no contract at all, they are creating temporary insecurity which may spread to young adulthood and beyond. In this situation social class makes a difference in coping with hard times and uncertain prospects. Many lower-​class youths living at home are expected to earn money in order to supplement the family income. The squeezed middle class finds itself in a situation of declining wages and increasing living costs and tend to recognise when their children work for pocket money, whereas the upper classes can support their children, who prefer to work for recreational purposes. In Germany, the unemployed under 25  years who receive social assistance (€424) are required to accept job offers from the employment agency. There are sanctions if they do not comply: The money will be reduced by one third, even when the offered job does not fit their skill profile and ambitions. It is mainly school dropouts or young people with low grades who are in such a situation of institutional dependence. This activation strategy tends to create feelings of failure, threatens self-​esteem and social recognition and may be the beginning of a sequence of job episodes (gigs) with low wages. In her comparative study of students in England, Sweden and Italy, Antonucci (2018) found a variety of precariousness:  working in temporary jobs to supplement the lack of family support in England, reduced state support increasing the pressure to take on precarious jobs in Sweden, and pressure to work because of a lack of state and family support in Italy. For Germany, Standing (2011, p 73) claimed that there is a ‘three-​way streaming which a growing part of the system is preparing youth for life in the precariat’. As we have shown, this is an unfounded assumption, since the stream of disadvantage has

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become smaller since the Great Recession, while the academic stream is becoming bigger, both with a low rate of NEET. Furthermore, the state component of the German welfare mix is still providing resources for the disadvantaged, for example vocational preparation and benefits.

Changing educational pathways In most EU countries, there has been a steady shift from vocational education or training to higher education degrees in the first two decades of the 21st century. Becoming prepared for the ‘brave new world of digital work’ by self-​education and a mindset of innovation and disruption demands at least secondary school attainment and consecutive further education. A  knowledge base consisting of catchwords, Facebook and Twitter messages will not suffice for penetrating how the digital society is working; IT workers, for instance, are required to update their skill profile at least three times during their career. For many young people and their parents, the academic pathway has become the primary entry gate to a career. This is creating a resource problem: in recent decades, tuition fees have risen sharply in many countries. An extreme case is the US, where the fees for a four-​year programme has risen eight times faster than wages since 1989. There is even a black market in educational goods for parents who intend to buy their children a spot in the freshman classes of top universities. There are indications that the higher education system in EU countries is transforming from a public good into a private enterprise that caters for the well-​to-​do segment of society. A BA programme at one of the few German private universities costs €28,500, a sum that only children from relatively wealthy families can afford, whereas public universities are free, apart from a small administrative charge. The cost of living, primarily rent, and studying depends on the city and field of study and ranges between €650 and €1,500 a month. Students’ social origin still has a big impact on enrolment: 79 per cent of young adults with parents who have an academic qualification enter university and 10 per cent of them will obtain a doctorate, whereas just 27 per cent with non-​academic parents are university-​bound and only 1 per cent will attain a doctorate (DZHW, 2019). For a substantial number of students in Germany it turns out that their financial situation, their field of studies, the learning requirements or the academic culture did not meet their expectations; 30 per cent dropped out in 2018 (DZHW, 2019). A  third of the dropouts are leaving the lecture hall for crafts or sales by accepting the option

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to change their education path by entering VET with a reduced duration of two years; others look for employment or plan to return to academia later. The cost of higher education also has been escalating in the UK; state funding reduction has put the burden on students and their parents. Thus, debt is a normal part of student and post-​graduation life in both the UK and the US, though many fail to pay off the student loans. Compared to no higher education or vocational education, debt is regarded as a good investment for labour market success and professional careers. Interviews with working-​class young people in Wales (Evans and Donnelly, 2018) indicated that they have an ambivalent attitude toward university debt, with a tendency towards accepting high and rising fees as a fact of life. These transition challenges have created an extended dependency on family support to meet the cost of studying, living and housing. The resources from gig jobs and state support do not compensate.

Self-​employment as an alternative path Some young adults attempt to leave unemployment by becoming self-​ employed. A recent survey in 11 European countries (Dvoulety et al, 2018) suggests that compared to other young adults the proportion of those who became self-​employed out of necessity is much higher –​not by choice but out of need, mainly in low-​skill occupations, as a last resort. The spread of gig jobs, precarious job starts, temporary jobs, fixed term and zero-​hour contracts are the dark side of the flexibility drive, which borders on the precarious transition of becoming NEET. Instead of realising work expectations like independence, self-​ realisation, job security, income and work–​life balance, this segment of disadvantaged youth navigates their transitions as commuting between precarious self-​employment and as a client of job and welfare agencies. The life course consequences are long-​term biographical uncertainty and the extension of young adulthood by postponing an adult-​ like, independent conduct of living, for example by living at home again, returning to training or college for additional qualifications, searching for employment opportunities, and recurrent attempts at improving employability. A very different transition narrative comes from self-​employment in establishing a start-​up -​it is not an expression of misery but an attempt at developing an enterprise based on an innovative business idea. To facilitate such a transition, universities and business consultants offer ‘entrepreneurship camps’ for students who intend to start a firm: a

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starting place for tomorrow’s start-​ups. Almost half of the founders have a university degree, and most are able to invest their own money into their enterprise. The survival rate of start-​ups, however, is rather low and the majority of the founders have to change their path again. Thus, the alternative of navigating the transition by the path of self-​employment is a solution that carries the risk of getting stuck in precarious living conditions, of having to return to a less autonomous employment contract or of starting another business. Another option is to enrol in post-​formal education. This has become a means for upward occupational mobility, for adapting to the changing skill demands, switching between jobs and enriching one’s digital and communication skills, for example in business administration, programming, English or Chinese. The education markets that offer courses leading to certificates are booming. Many young professionals are studying in-​service or part-​time for a degree in business administration, social work or IT at private universities of applied sciences, paying fees. Sometimes they are supported by their employer or the job centre for reintegration into the labour market.

Transition problems: IT addiction, crime Many pupils and students become victims of digital harassment, which creates the feeling of social rejection via Twitter and Facebook. Institutions for regulating the digital universe are missing the point that privacy is at risk and therefore the competence of self-​regulation and careful use of the smartphone must be strengthened in school VET, and college –​as a navigation skill. Participating in the internet and social media is standard behaviour among young people and the number of IT addicts, of digital junkies, is increasing. Do we witness the negative impacts of being online all the time? Many young adults are focused on gaming. Some are hooked on strategy games, such as ‘League of Legends’, involved in virtual gaming for many hours, day and night, which results in a retreat from social relationships and the real world. The case of competitive gaming, beating virtual co-​players online, demands spending much time, which excludes the player from real-​life contacts and experiences. There is the risk of losing control and becoming stuck in social isolation. The WHO has defined young people’s dependency on computer games such as ‘Counter Strike’ (also called ‘ego-​shooter’) as a ‘gaming disorder’, also regarding permanent participation in virtual team competition games such as ‘Fortnite’. These activities may also contribute to collecting positive feedback from peers for

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being a talented game player, which strengthens the self-​esteem of otherwise isolated young people but may jeopardise their transition to an adult identity. Teenagers and young adults on the road to independence tend to experiment with different lifestyles. Some engage in risk-​taking behaviour for testing the limits, gaining peer group recognition, rebelling against adult rules, engaging in fights and violating norms –​ sometimes losing control of their tempers. For many offenders this is a transitory episode if they are encouraged to get involved. Though the number of young people suspected of having committed a crime has been declining in Germany by more than half since 2005, there is a rising fear of violence among the population. A main reason is the media reports that emphasise violent crimes committed by young refugees. Data, however, show that only one third of the young suspects were put on trial, and that half of the victims were in the group of refugees. These cases call for an intensification of preventive actions, social integration by education, language training, job offers and youth social work.

Conclusion Transitions conceived as status passages (Heinz, 1996) are life course events that impact on all dimensions of living. Societies differ in the structure and number of pathways provided for moving from education to work. Young people must navigate single, multiple and overlapping passages in sequences, such as leaving home, entering VET or college, graduating, finding a job and forming a family. With a focus on Germany, which still has a well-​organised system of multiple pathways, we have discussed the different ways by which young women and young men coordinate the components of their transition to adulthood in different socio-​economic and institutional contexts. We highlighted the effects of digitalisation on the structure and supply of occupations; routine jobs give way to jobs that demand mental flexibility, self-​efficacy and lifelong learning. An increasing number of (early) school leavers are faced with precarious transitions, being stuck in a NEET situation and later in gig jobs. Therefore, to get out of precarity and become able to construct individual paths, young people must be supported by additional educational opportunities and active labour market policies. We have stressed that navigating the transition process and coming to terms with its outcome demand not just special individual effort, but also require alternative pathways besides the academic route and, most important, an adequate social welfare mix.

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Education, capability and skills ‘How do we ensure that the digital economy doesn’t leave people behind?’ To answer this question posed by Mathew Taylor and Payal Dalal (2019) of Britain’s Royal Society of Arts requires much deeper consideration than has been the case for societal transformations of this kind in the past. As we shall see, ‘The Internet of Everything’ produces change at an accelerating rate in every domain of human activity, of which the most problematic, in terms of meeting youth transition needs, is education. At the most basic level, as the previous chapter showed, prior to the influx of digitalisation, schooling supplied, at least in principle, the knowledge and skills needed to lay the foundations for later participation in vocational training, the labour market and citizenship. With the dramatic changes in the organisation of the labour market from the 1970s onwards –​now confronted by the challenges of digitalisation and ever-​a ccelerating technological change  –​ transformation reaches another level of complexity. The far-​reaching educational consequences have been evident for some time, but until the 2007/​08 banking crisis, and the recession that followed, most of these effects on young people’s prospects were barely recognised (Schoon and Bynner, 2019). The crisis economy, marked by 12 years of post-​2008 banking collapse and austerity, was characterised by lack of stability and insecurity. Short-​term and zero-​hour contracts, ‘casual’ jobs and unemployment replaced secure positions across whole swathes of the labour market. The consequence in Britain was a massive rise in social and economic inequality and the beginnings of the case not only for lifelong income support but universal lifelong learning (Bynner, 2017). In Germany there was a faster recovery and a race to higher-​ level education, adding to educational inequality. Against this background, this chapter addresses the role of education in supplying added value in the digital society of which Germany and the UK are now a part. What should be the content of the curriculum for young people pursuing the various routes to adult life in the changed circumstances of a rapidly transforming society and uncertain international relations arising from Brexit? What are the capabilities and transformational mechanisms essential for full participation that

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the education system has to transmit to the younger generation in the digital society? And in doing so, what are the major challenges that must be met? Moreover, as considered previously in relation to vocational education and training, what are the distinctive differences between the support structures needed now and the form these took in the past?

Origins of the education problem To understand the education problem confronting the digital society it is important to identify its status historically. In the 1980s, the experience of boom-​and-​bust industry was accompanied by deindustrialisation and replacement, at least in the UK, if not in Germany, by typically service-​based industries (Ashton and Bynner, 2014). The changes took place in a number of stages, each of which was accompanied by a catchall label to characterise in broad, often overlapping, terms the nature of the society that was arising from them, against the background in October 1963 of his ‘White Heat of Technology’ speech, as Harold Wilson, Britain’s prime minister at the time described it. The first of these labels reflected, in the 1970s, the appearance of, first, mainframe computers and then the beginnings of information technology. The starting point was computer-​based electronic communications at a distance –​office-​based email (Knowledge society). The second label reflected the possibilities for communication around large-​scale information storage, retrieval, manipulation and use when opened up by the internet (Information society).The third label reflected the impact of digitalisation on data collection, storage and deployment in every area of activity (Digital society). There was now controlled access to the mountains of data collected by governments and corporate bodies at all levels. The counterpart was widespread availability of computers in first desktop and subsequently smartphone and tablet form, then as part of the ‘smart’ machinery of every device from cars to bus stops. The consequence of this latter shift from a knowledge society via an information society to a digital society was the need for rapid expansion of individual, collective and corporate digitalisation know-​ how together with such by-​products as artificial intelligence, robotics and machine learning. There was also recognition of new challenges for individual and group identity, and consequently capacity building, to which both Britain and Germany responded. Germany, in part in response to the poor 1977 PISA results, undertook a complete overhaul of the school and VET curriculum to prepare young people to compete successfully for good jobs in the new labour market.

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In a situation where the labour market requires flexibility and employers demand continual improvement of skills profiles, the options are either upskilling by the workforce through lifelong learning or recruiting new people (or robots) that have the relevant skills to fill the competence gap. Families’ protective response has been to stress higher educational attainment as the safest route to the labour market rather than VET with ever rising costs. This investment is often, at least initially, with diminishing returns. Moreover, the option becomes increasingly discriminatory as families without the means of meeting the added costs are effectively squeezed out.

Internet of things and everything How do these developments play into the wider ramifications of the digital context, especially through their implications for education and training? The first stage of digital contextualisation comprises the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT)  –​namely the media for and means of communicating data and messages across the internet with three main components. Networking involves exploiting the possibility of linkage of elements sharing common ground. Devices refers to the hardware and software that carry the communication –​smartphones to super-​fast multiply connected computers. Big data refers to the information, especially that collected by governments and other corporate sources, that can be transferred to or collected from all the members of the network. The ‘Internet of Everything’ contrasts with the ‘Internet of Things’ in that not only are the networking possibilities of the internet exploited, but also everything that can potentially go with them, especially the human interfaces across the networks with their defining feature, connectivity. Here the emphasis shifts to the nature of the data, the system for data collection, its use and the possibilities of manipulation that go with both. The broadening embraces what can be seen as four distinct ‘pillars’ of the ‘Internet of Everything’:  people (connections), data (intelligence), process (delivery) and things (computing devices). In this scenario digitalisation extends into every aspect of living from the family to schooling and the workplace –​hence its apt description as Internet of Everything. The counterparts, artificial intelligence coupled with robotics and machine learning, add more significance in relation to the speed of transformative possibilities, from driving to banking. The consequence that we consider in more detail later is businesses and industry replacing human beings by systems modelled

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on human attributes for undertaking work tasks. The added bonus is that such operations are now capable of being done at much higher speeds and are in principle error-​free. The downside is the potential for cybercrime, including the hacking of private, business and state communications and creating ‘fake news’, to which young people and election campaigns are particularly vulnerable. Such extensions raise increasingly ethical questions about how far the exploitation of such data should go. As we shall see in later chapters, there has been growing recognition of the need for universal standards directed at deciding what the governance rules of participation should be. Given that the technology is available to support what are fundamentally no more than communication platforms, four kinds of issues need to be resolved. These are validity:  can the data be trusted; security:  how can we prevent unauthorised access; and data standards:  when can we take on trust the information supplied. As commentators have noted, the early days of the internet had more resemblance to the Wild West than a civilising enterprise. The consequence was fear of oppressive legislation enacted by governments to control the internet, especially in the United States. An influential response came in the form of a paper, ‘A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace’, presented by John Perry Barlow (1996) at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and published online. The declaration was widely endorsed by existing websites across the world. It is not surprising, therefore, that a more formal response followed in which international agencies such as UNICEF, the United Nations, the World Bank and OECD got to grips with the means of regulating the internet by establishing data standards and laws for data production and use. However, as recent debates in the EU Parliament and European Commission document, there is massive resistance by the IT giants to any significant regulation. Only high fines seem to have any effect.

Educational challenges According to Dumont and Istance (2010, p  23), ‘Workers in the digital economy should be able to generate and process complex information; think systematically and critically; take decisions weighing different forms of evidence; ask meaningful questions about different subjects; be adaptable and flexible to new information; be creative; and be able to identify and solve real-​world problems.’ Attempts at classification of the skills needed through exposing

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differences also point to much common ground among such bodies as the US National Research Council, UNESCO, OECD and the European Union (European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP)). All agree about the need to distinguish between skills directed at mastery of digital technology, that is, the technical skills that are required to use it, and digital navigation skills, enabling the most effective use to be made of the skills, as they comprise the wider set of generic skills needed to survive in the digital world. Digital skills include mastery of all digital devices, whatever the operating system, and the applications (apps) developed from using it. Such skills also extend to the efficient collection, linkage, storage, manipulation and transformation of data. As generally agreed, all of these skills are best grouped according to their function and tied to the means of their acquisition and use. They comprise ability to access and use information in digital format (requiring skills in coding and data manipulation of various kinds); finding information, prioritising information and assessing the quality and reliability of information (Levy and Murnane, 2019). As we shall see, the last of these is where high-​level literacy, numeracy and analytical skills of the kind operative in different occupational areas become especially important and specialised courses are likely to be needed to teach them. The digital navigation skills cover a much wider range of generic competence already in existence. They are not fundamentally different from the non-​digital skills that were necessary in the past and that are still required today, although they have to be ‘translated’ for use in a digital context. Although the list is in effect infinitely expandable, there is broad agreement that it should include cognitive skills, including mental processes, knowledge and understanding, and creativity; intrapersonal skills, including openness, work ethic and self-​ efficacy; and interpersonal skills, including teamwork collaboration and leadership. The case is also made by the OECD particularly for a socio-​ emotional (‘soft skills’) component, including working with others, managing emotions and achieving goals –​all reflecting the social and mental challenges for well-​being that digitalisation entails. Also, skills interact with each other in acquisition and use and have cumulative effects. Other contributions to the specification build on these core principles to identify skills needs more fully in less technical areas of competence, including ‘how to develop a new mindset for a digital world’ (OECD, 2016).

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The point is made that these more intangible and interpersonal kinds of skill, though difficult to measure, can be developed and improved upon to meet the needs of digitalisation in an appropriate learning environment. What is also important is learning techniques for checking the reliability of internet communications, including the unmasking of such hostile sources of information as fake news. Finally, to emphasise continuities as well as the disruptions caused by digitalisation, a new basis for employability in the digital society comprises primarily a strengthening and development of what already exists with only a shift of emphasis. Of particular importance is the development of sound ‘distrust and inspection’ skills to test the credibility of digital messages of all kinds (Dumont and Istance, 2010, p 23).

Skills and capability So where should skills in the more general educational sense fit into this wealth of new developments? The components of skills are ability, capacity, effort in undertaking tasks, comprising cognitive, technical and interpersonal expertise. In line with this definition, but going beyond it, for our purposes here, skills as Jacques Delors, President of the European Commission from 1985 to 1995, described them are the means of opening the door to lifelong and ‘life-​wide’ learning. Hence this broader scope embraces other domains of life besides the economic, as a simple three-​staged learning model suggests (Bynner, 2017). At the first (input) level there are the different kinds of learning available:  formal (linked to certification); non-​formal (learning without certification); and informal (day-​to-​day learning in the family, the community and the workplace). At the next level are the broad outcomes of formal and informal learning in the form of skills acquired. These accomplishments, however, take different forms depending on the learning’s purpose: • basic (or foundation) skills (comprising literacy, numeracy, communication and more recently digital competence) supplying the foundations of subsequent skills development in all life course domains; • generic skills (such as teamwork, leadership and creativity) supplying, depending on context, the key components of adult functioning in the family, the community and increasingly the workplace;

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• work-​based skills (ranging from plumbing to dentistry) in large part acquired in the workplace by training and practice and not generally transferable from one specific occupation to another. In the final stage, capability is achieved when the skills acquired match aspiration and become part of personal identity. In Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen’s terms, capability drives the outcomes of learning in education, the labour market and the community, supplying the potential through which effective functioning and consequently well-​ being will be achieved. In other words, skills and the goals to which they are directed in the capability approach are bound to the context in which they will be exercised and the freedom to draw on the personal, family, workplace and community resources needed to gain them. At every stage of the process, as another Nobel Prize winning economist Robert Heckman’s much quoted aphorism puts it, ‘skills beget skills’, that is, acquiring a skill motivates further learning. This strategy includes gaining certification that will lead to further courses and achievements. Here the curriculum issue to be addressed may be directed more at progression in the organisations supplying training for which employers and senior management are the gate-​ keepers. Use of this approach is especially the case in manufacturing and technically driven areas where the capabilities gained by students and deployed by teachers will require continual upgrading. On the other hand, many of the skills needed in the digital society will be gained informally most obviously within families and passed from one generation to the next. Others reside in social life and the hobbies and interests young people have, including more formal associations like youth clubs and sports clubs, especially when structured activity is the norm –​‘learning by doing’ rather than just ‘hanging out’. In the broader picture of capability building, skills may therefore be regarded as relatively isolated samples of acquired knowledge and understanding directed at action or practice of some highly specific kind. In consequence, the learning of skills should be seen as the central factor of competence and functionality, that is, the building blocks of capability not only in work situations but in every domain of contemporary living.

Reframing the curriculum Using the categorisations discussed as a broad framework, we now examine the curriculum challenges they present for building capability

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in the digital society. Much has been written over the last few decades about the deficiencies of what exists in the school and post-​school curriculum and what should be put in their place. As discussed in the previous chapter, there are plenty of examples in England and Germany of reforms to meet new labour market needs but few signs yet of the radical changes that are increasingly going to be needed to meet fully the demands for capability in the digital society. In the past, educational transformations have typically followed major economic and political upheavals, usually after a substantial time lag. As we have seen, there has been recognition of the need to update current curriculum content, transition routes to meet new societal and labour market needs and to improve the ways in which the teaching and learning for capability is delivered. The transformation to digitalisation differs from others in the sense that the changes now are continuous and accelerating across all the domains of life at an increasing rate. In this case the curriculum has to maintain a balance between retaining what is culturally timeless and what is needed to function in the ever-​ changing digital world. But in a sense the emerging curriculum will always remain a step or two behind what is happening in the economy and the wider society –​ and the need to surpass, or at least match, the new educational strategies of comparable economies. What marks out the present upheavals is the need for updating on a continuing basis. As Sir Ken Robinson (2006) put it in widely quoted TED talk, ‘Nobody has a clue … what the world will look like in five years’ time. And yet, we’re meant to be educating them for it. So the unpredictability, I think, is extraordinary’. Only a policy of continuous updating through lifelong learning could possibly supply what is needed (West, 2018). Nevertheless, despite the broadening of the curriculum that this recognition implies, unlike the framework proposed earlier, the focus of most of the writing on the subject is directed not surprisingly at the commercial and economic aspects of digitalisation. The wider issues of citizenship, including social renewal, democratic and participative engagement that were a major theme of lifelong learning in the early years of the European Community, have tended to be neglected. Only rarely has it been recognised that these different curriculum aims interact with each other, requiring holistic approaches (Wolf, 2004). What must be avoided is another rigidly scheduled discipline-​based reform of education with front-​ended completion and certification at various stages through the teens and twenties. The programme has to be one of flexibly delivered instruction, directed at individual and collective achievement in acquiring the relevant capabilities across the

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whole of the life course. Teachers also have to manage the problem, that whatever the programme is, its outcome is uncertain and occupationally may be restricted to keeping up with an ever-​changing employment and skills landscape. Returning to the distinction between non-​formal and informal learning makes the point that whatever is learnt in classrooms is the tip of the iceberg of what goes on in learning terms informally through the family, the peer group, the community and especially the workplace (Smith, 1999). Within families it is from the moment parents start demonstrating the remarkable accomplishment of teaching their toddler to speak the native language. A notable feature of digitalisation is that the fastest routes taken into it tend to be coming from the next generation post-​1986. ‘Digital Natives’, educated from a young age, these experts in the digital basics are often several steps ahead of their teachers. This superiority is not necessarily bad news if it speeds the learning process and opens opportunities for debate about the contents of digital communication –​ for example, learning how ‘fake news’ is constructed to the disadvantage of young people. But in the negative case, a student who thinks they know it all can be disruptive to classroom practice and lead to confused and inaccurate digital understanding which can wreck the whole programme. More generally, informal learning is the essential counterpart to formal teaching in the digital society, supplying a means of updating and interacting with new and old knowledge in all domains, which should be to every citizen’s advantage. Learning of whatever kind motivates further learning, thereby extending acquired knowledge, understanding and skills of various kinds to meet the learner’s needs.

Computers versus people Much of the reasoning about what needs to be taught to build capability stems from considerations about what computers can and cannot do in taking over work-​based tasks from human beings. The assumptions of mass digital transformation leading to steady increases in unemployment, as predicted in relation to the arrival of computers as early as the 1960s, was not born out in the way envisaged. In fact, if anything during the whole period that followed the arrival of computers, employment levels actually increased. What changed, with negative effects, as discussed in Chapter  4, was the nature of employment, in which the security of continuing contracts gave way to short-​term and zero-​hour arrangements (Bynner et al, 2017).

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Levy and Murnane (2019, pp 47–​8), usefully distinguish between three types of work task: those where rules are straightforward to apply; those requiring modelling different outcomes from data patterns; and those where no rules apply or some of the relevant information cannot be obtained. Such a conceptual framework points to the changing nature of employment in that only two of the five types of job Levey and Murnane listed can be identified as indispensable: working with new information; solving unstructured problems; routine manual tasks; non-​routine manual tasks; and routine cognitive tasks. Only the first two of these require human involvement and, according to Levy and Murnane (2019), are on an ‘expanding trajectory’, while the other three are in principle straightforward to digitalise and are declining in their presence in the labour market. However, such a restrictive position would be seen as denying the cognitive and interpersonal components of many physical tasks, of which nursing is perhaps the prime example. Accordingly, accepting the need for continuous updating is where the future of education for the coming generations needs to lie. That is to say, the learning focus should be on building the skills that are central to the capabilities that the digital society is going to need while scaling back from most of the rest. This approach points to an educational system that may in time bear little resemblance, at least from age 14, to the kind of education system that is taken for granted now. A major policy overhaul is suggested before the consequences of not acting quickly are damaging not only at the individual level, but for society as a whole.

Countries compared We tend to assume that these developments are comparable across western European countries and other comparable economies around the world. It follows that in relation to the European Union there would be very little variation in their progress towards the digital society. In fact, the variation is considerable and does not always follow the expected pattern. Thus, from the results of the 2018 European Community Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) bi-​annual survey a number of features stand out. In the composite rating from the five major indicators –​connectivity, human capital, use of internet, integration of digital technology, digital public services  –​Denmark, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands have consistently led the way with an over 70 per cent rating.

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The UK falls a little below the top four at 60 per cent. Germany, surprisingly, remains consistently close to the median for all 28 EU countries, barely reaching 50 per cent. The main reason for this somewhat surprising finding is that in Germany, rather than central government, the individual federal states (Bundesländer) are responsible for school finances and the curriculum. Thus, it took a long awaited and hotly debated modification of the German constitution for the release of funds for the digitalisation of schools in the federal states. The main reason for the high performance of particularly the Baltic countries is their structure of economic activities. They share a dominance of service industries, have small populations and near-​universal fluency in the digitally ubiquitous English language. The EU’s relatively poor performance in the DESI index raises questions not only about the content of the current curriculum but the means of its delivery. Computer-​assisted learning has had a mixed history in some areas as users came to realise what such a form of learning was and was not able to do (Bynner, 2017). Distance and online teaching, including such large-​scale digitalised provision as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), have obvious financial attractions. But it increasingly becomes apparent that to head off the exceptionally high levels of dropout from such courses (only 7 per cent of starters are likely to complete a degree), recourse back to an element of face-​to-​ teaching cannot be avoided. This is essential in any event to achieve what has to be a two-​way interaction, between teacher and student, over what has been learnt, what has not been learnt and how the gap between the two could be made up. On the other hand, in complementary fashion, there are large swathes of classroom learning, where there is very little recognition or use made of digital provision as part of the learning experience. This failure is likely to constitute a serious deficiency in what students have been able to acquire in terms of knowledge and skills that are essential not only in their working life but in their ability to function effectively and responsibly in the digital society.

Digital exclusion This last point leads to one of the most serious gaps in digital learning that needs to be made good for full functioning of all citizens in both the neo-​liberal economy and the digital society. As with all educational achievement and skills acquisition, a section of the population, to whom teaching is directed, will not be able to take best advantage of it for a variety of reasons –​economic, motivational and physical, for example

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health (France, 2016; Exley, 2019). Moreover, such students will not be able to master what has been taught at a level that will enable them to progress across the levels through which the curriculum is structured. As digitalisation becomes increasingly the norm in relation to almost every activity in modern living, such a ‘digital divide’ becomes a major problem not only for the individuals affected but to those connected with them in the workplace, school and society (Levy and Murnane, 2004). As with functional illiteracy more generally, absence of the needed digital skills in adulthood can be made good, to a degree, informally with the help of younger family members and, in some situations, friends and neighbours. But for those without access to such resources the deficit can become debilitating, laying the foundations for permanent isolation and social exclusion. Most obviously, those members of the older generation, who were simply not born at a time when digital exposure necessitated mastery of digital skills, are particularly vulnerable to this risk. But if suitably motivated they can often be inducted into how to override it. A UK ‘Open College’ initiative, directed at enhancing the digital skills of the elderly, of which there are similar examples in Germany, was offered in local libraries. The course turned out to be one of the most popular on offer. There were long waiting lists of pensioners wanting to join, a substantial proportion of whom were signing up in order to learn how to help their grandchildren with their homework! But the same disadvantage applies to those members of the younger (supposedly ‘digitally native’) generation who have failed to keep up with the curriculum or are unable to have regular access to computers. This problem points to the need for major initiatives to compensate for earlier failures. Rather along the lines of the US GI bill that offered free college education to World War II veterans, such a reversal of disadvantage can be best achieved through a package of cost-​free support  –​including today the supply, free of charge, of a laptop computer or tablet for use at home to all young people who need them. An investment of this kind would make it possible for all to participate in the digital society. Without such national investment, digital poverty becomes a particularly threatening and unforgiving source of major disadvantage and exclusion. A political response to the changing nature of employment is to promote a substantial rise in staying on in education rather than leaving at the minimum age of 16 or 18 (Germany), respectively. In the UK, a surprising proportion of up to 30 per cent of the cohort, however, continue to leave school at this age, 16 per cent compared with 12 per cent in Germany. Despite the legal requirement in Britain

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to maintain involvement with education in some form until age 18, attempts to encourage full re-​engagement in education, including further education college, have been largely unsuccessful. This is often because of the poor literacy and numeracy of the potential students. In Germany, for the much lower figure of 12 per cent failing to gain an apprenticeship such involvement is mandatory, involving relegation to watered down versions of apprenticeships, known as ‘pre-​vocational training measures’, where less than a third of participants succeed in entering a job upon completion. As we saw in Chapter 1, the reasons for these differences are structural and cultural and have a long history, particularly in the UK. There is a legacy to surmount of class-​driven expectations supporting higher education routinely for the middle and monied classes (over 50 per cent) and lower rated technical and crafts training and job seeking for the rest. The kinds of work that early school leavers typically end up in offer few prospects and little, if any, educational development. The consequence, as we have documented in Chapter 4, is a growing precariat to which such disadvantaged young people are the first to be assigned.

Capability and freedom The foregoing considerations began with ideas of enhancing economic outputs and end with a blueprint for contemporary living. This broader picture extends the need for capability (Sen, 1992) in all areas of digital functioning from iPad use for finding out what’s on at the local cinema, to running a company and standing for parliament. In this sense, generic and work-​related digital skills become capabilities defined by the socio-​political and economic context in which they are deployed. For those users engaged in education or training inside or outside the formal system, including when ill or in custody, the target outcome is adaptation to if not survival in the digital universe. And this success is to be achieved not only by means of the capability acquired for specialist purposes, but for the facility to function in any life course situation. The strategy includes gaining certification that will lead to further courses and achievements. Amartya Sen’s promotion of the concept of capability in terms of ‘freedom to achieve wellbeing’ (Sen, 2001, p 113), derives originally from his Nobel Prize-​winning work in development economics. In a context of acute poverty and lack of the tools of learning, progress could be inhibited to the point that it could not happen or, if it did, could not be sustained when the immediate injection of resources to

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supporting the initiative terminated. The association of the concept of freedom with such a situation is seen in terms of fundamental human rights. In our case, having the means of gaining that freedom and, therefore, equality of the learning context underpins the opportunity to learn and the improved well-​being that follows. This account makes the point that the concept of freedom to achieve extends across the whole range of human functioning and experience, now completely reconstructed in large areas through digitalisation. On the other hand, rather than such capability being a source of universal liberation, in the absence of the necessary motivational context and resources to convert capability into tangible achievement it may come to be seen by some recipients as worthless. The major international mission for all societies, especially those most advanced in digitalisation, must be to spread capability as widely as possible, adapting the skills people bring to meet individual aspiration and societal need. Coordination of such development is already happening in a limited way by such organisations as OECD, the UN, UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank. The focus is on impoverished countries, while the western nations are expected to have the resources to build capability independently. The major tech company Google, on the other hand, is content with the exhortation ‘Don’t ask just use’. The main point to be made in response to Google is that it is in the interests of every country to head off, or at least ameliorate, not only destructive forces such as flooding, fire and famine, but digital starvation through which the problems from these natural disasters will be compounded and multiplied. Just using, without understanding the meaning of digitalisation, will never be enough. Commitment to updating old accomplishments in new settings does not of course ensure their existence for the people to whom they are directed. The skill component of capability remains as important as ever. Where much new thinking is needed is in how to build the motivation and aspirational elements of capability, as well as an antidote to the exclusion elements that are also ever present (Exley, 2019). Here the challenge of continuous change becomes another major issue. In the digital society there is not only the need for assessment of what has been achieved but of finding means of updating what is measured on a continuous basis. The parameters of such measurement, however, may themselves also be continually changing and are at present little understood. What becomes clear is the need for flexibility and adaptability combined with observation and self-​reporting alongside, if not replacing much of, formal testing.

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Such a development implies a shift away from ‘summative’ to ‘formative’ assessment as the main vehicle for appraisal. At the same time, in the interest of equality, it is essential that achievement can be recognised and certified by standards applicable to all. The over-​arching goal must be to eliminate all manifestations of digital exclusion and the digital divide as a means of reducing social inequality. Closer to home and central to the ‘Youth Question’ (Cohen, 1997), the opportunity for employment, that is, access to work, within reach of those young people who need it is the essential complement to capability. In the digital society the two will be in constant interaction as new forms of occupation and civic engagement replace the old. Anything less will, as Alan France (2016) and Pat Ainley (2016) argue, be yet a further betrayal of young people, especially those who in the past have been left behind. All should have the right to well-​being by successfully participating in the reconstructing digital world.

Conclusion This chapter started by pointing to what we can expect as significant educational challenges in the digital society of tomorrow compared with those of today. The major theme was the phenomenal rate of change in digital operations and social functionality and the role of education in supplying the capabilities that each successor generation is going to need. The challenges here embrace the moving feast of an ever-​accelerating labour market and societal transformation. As each new technological step is taken, action may be indicated not only in the form of curriculum shifts but to match what is new with the whole socio-​economic context in which the shift is occurring. Social inequality itself comes under scrutiny as old occupational hierarchies give way potentially to new forms of distribution of resources and changing identities. At such times, education and, therefore, curriculum development become the means of assuring continuity while at the same time offering within society digital capability as the essential means of renewal. The identity dynamics involved are complex and difficult to fathom but nevertheless become the vital means of maintaining intergenerational solidarity and well-​being, underpinning perhaps the survival of not only our own societies, and the EU, but globally. The building of capability on a continuing basis through lifelong learning is the essential counterpart to which governments and business must subscribe.

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Smart families and community The form families take, and their internal organisation, have been changing in the process of modernisation. Formal marriage has increasingly given way to cohabitation as the basis of partnership and having children, while more recently the marriage contract has been extended to same-​sex couples of either gender to enable them to formalise their relationships. In contrast, the trend in the other direction has been the rise of singlehood. Increasing numbers of adults in a partnership with or without children or living alone are resisting the idea of formal or informal partnership in favour of staying single. These self-​determined ‘singletons’ are joined by the growing proportion of others, who –​as a consequence of marital or partnership breakdown, in which children are involved –​become single parents. Nevertheless, despite the importance of these latter family formations, in policy terms there is still, albeit implicitly, a broad consensus, reinforced judicially and through the tax and benefits system of the desirability of formal marriage and children as the basis of family life. The commitment to it of a substantial section of the adult population remains strong. Family types define the various contexts in which children of the current era grew up and stayed in, or left, the family home. As we have seen, since the 1980s there has been a postponement of leaving home, forming continuing partnerships, getting married and having children. At its simplest level this points to increasing stress laid on family functioning largely borne by parents. The purpose of this chapter is to examine whether there is an identifiable digitalising effect on family functioning. How are young people and their family members using and affected by digital devices? What are the intergenerational connections over use, what concerns do parents have about their children’s online activity and what are the rules, if any, governing the communications? Who are the gatekeepers, mentors and significant others for young people in the digital world?

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Digitalisation and its counterparts On the face of it, digitalisation seems unlikely to have an effect on family structures and dynamics, but that would perhaps be an oversimplification. The family at home is absorbing the internet online facilities to which family members have access individually and collectively. Hence their use in connection with potentially problematic areas like social networking can then be negotiable. Shared internet experience thus becomes an indispensable part of family life. The language of smartphones, tablets, social media and networking spills over to that of ‘smart families’, of which the key feature is connectivity. Moreover, in relation to digitalisation, young people in the smart home are likely to be in advance of their parents in the technical competence needed to make best use of it by becoming connected. To use two of the somewhat hackneyed metaphors of the period, as ‘digital natives’ most young people are likely to be more technically savvy in the basics of such computer use. While many parents, not to say older family members such as grandparents, are for the time being ‘digital immigrants’. Young people in the family and their friends will know about the available websites of interest and will make selections accordingly, emigrating from one site to another as the communication platform –​ including use, or not, of video and audio media depending on the links, for example Facebook versus Snapchat. The age and gender of users are also likely to be critical factors, as website providers recognise in tailoring their marketing to specific age groups, interests and needs. If all the elements come together, the outcome for a young person can be hours spent connected each day. In one step there is the basis of the mouth-​watering membership and advertising earnings that the owner or provider is seeking to realise from the site. In contrast, parents’ connectivity, when it exists at all, tends to be to be expressed in terms of practical usage, with the exception of Twitter, to which typically professional young to middle-​aged adults gravitate, and less frequently such sites as Facebook and WhatsApp for keeping in touch. The main adult online use of internet time, for non-​professional purposes, is to tap into the treasure trove of easily accessible information, from news flashes to stocks and shares and weather reports. Depending on the user’s age and gender, experience may extend to games, fashion and music, some of which, depending on the age of both parties, may be shared with the other household members. Another major usage includes using the internet to access services for online purchasing, such as travel bookings, meeting venues

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and shopping, to be subsequently confirmed by recourse to the much longer standing technology of email.

Intergenerational relations Traditional ways of family living such as sharing meals and some leisure together are largely unaffected by the second and more fundamental question from the point of view of this chapter. This is the different experiences and effects on relations, between parents, other adults like grandparents and young people over internet use. This aspect is especially relevant in relation to social media and the wider range of internet-​facilitated communications. Thus, for example, controlling or supervising children’s use of the smartphone has become a major source of conflict between parents and their offspring. Certainly, lifestyles and leisure activities and the way they are expressed have changed quite dramatically over a relatively short period of time and much concern has been expressed about the implications of this change for intergenerational relations. The concern applies most obviously to parents and grandparents, but others with whom young people engage, such as teachers and youth workers, are also much affected by it. Two positions on the question of such impact are prominent, with many intermediate stances in between, which we shall be considering in more detail later. The first, while recognising some risks, sees digitalisation and the internet as largely a positive development  –​a source of limitless opportunities and freedoms for fulfilling experiences. Adaptation of previous practice to the multimedia communication possibilities offered by the internet is all that is demanded of the user. The alternative position takes a more guarded stance. While acknowledging some functional benefits, such as purchasing goods and services and accessing information, those who hold it see mainly negative effects and consequences, especially for young people. The concern is focused especially on exposure to social media in which shaping and presentation (via YouTube and its counterparts) and lack of face-​to-​face communication distorts the processes of growing up. Earlier chapters considered such issues in relation to various features of identity development. The question becomes:  are these changes merely adaptations of traditional methods of socialising through friendship groups and street-​corner conversations or do they constitute a more fundamental cultural and developmental shift that has yet to be fully recognised?

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Commentators are similarly divided about the extent to which this apparent gap between the younger as opposed to the older generation is to be resisted. To what extent is digitalisation heralding discontinuity with the generation preceding it –​not only reversing traditional family roles of teacher and learner but creating a world in which communications, interests and values, including young people’s own identities, are irrevocably bound to the internet. No less, in fact, than the start of what has been described as the fourth Industrial Age, as reflected in the new academic journal name Homo Virtualis (Tsekeris, 2018). The opposing view is that fundamentally nothing has changed except the means of achieving what in the past was at times more difficult or even impossible to do. As we saw in Chapter 5, from this standpoint the internet is no more than the last in a series of adaptations to new forms of communication that can be traced back to the beginning of the first Industrial Revolution through the three that followed it. The fourth Industrial Revolution, Digitalisation, is the one we are now in.

The class One of a number of valuable ethnographic investigations carried out by Sonya Livingstone and Julian Sefton-​Green (2016) was inspired by the question about the internet as a source of opportunity versus risk. In their book The Class they report following the lives of 25 children aged 13 to 14 in a school classroom in England. Over the course of a year the researchers elicited in minute detail every component of the young people’s internet exposure and its relation to other activities and experiences at home and in the classroom, including the views and experiences of parents and teachers. This approach enabled them to isolate, in terms of intergenerational relations, whether the internet made a difference. Surprisingly, the kind of privacy and multiple connectivity offered by the internet was used by these teenagers only to a limited extent. Although an individual’s network of ‘friends’ might extend to several hundred, most networking time was spent with a core group of fewer than 20. And within that number much of the interaction was more limited, mirroring the kind of social connecting that preceded the internet. Parents were also involved via the need for information and advice, exactly as before. Though both major stances –​negative or positive –​of digitalising youth gain some support from The Class, its findings overall favour the more positive judgement. The internet enabled the informants to

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investigate digitally new worlds in different locations. New identities and new relationships arising from them followed. In communication terms, Livingstone and Sefton-​Green (2016) conclude that the internet serves the purpose of simply reinforcing existing activities and relationships more effectively without fundamentally changing the basis on which such relationships are formed. Moreover, there was recognition and acceptance of parental restrictions on internet use without severely constraining the increased privacy of teenage street corner and bedroom culture of the kind experienced in the past. The main difference lay in the use of mobile phones for social networking purposes. For other purposes such as solving homework problems through the internet, use was shared with parents, older and younger siblings and friends using computers rather than the ubiquitous smartphone. Thus, the internet was seen mainly as a means of enhancing communication and providing information resources within the family for everyday living and working, though this scenario is of course somewhat idealised. Many parents working away from home could participate only to a limited extent and then only virtually.

Family interactions Again, there are two perspectives, this time reflecting the issues arising from internet use and family interactions that need reconciliation –​the ‘developmental’ and the ‘structural’. Relatively little, if anything, is mentioned in the internet research literature about family relationships and problems. As argued in earlier sections, the life course concept offers powerful pointers to relational problems and their solution (Elder, 1974/​79; Heinz, 2003; Elder and Cox, 2019). That is to say families supply one of the key components of the life course: linked lives, as manifested through the social relationships among individual family members and others to which each young family member relates. They include the school or college the young person is attending, through the medium of the teachers they connect with there and, perhaps the most important of all in terms of influence dynamics, in school and especially outside, the peer group. This combination may be expected to bring a mixture of ages and backgrounds into the communications, digitalised or not, of the group members. So, what determines action at any particular point? Of the three other interacting components of the life course the first of these, as we have seen in previous chapters, is agency. This relates to the extent to which the young person is driven by such attributes as aspiration,

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motivation and self-​image to taking one action rather than another, with or without the engagement of others such as parents, neighbours, teachers, youth workers and so on. The second component is culture –​the behavioural norms and values to which the young person has been exposed since birth. These supply the basis of the next set of interactions in this case, with the structural components including socio-​economic status, gender, ethnicity, locality, education and family income. The final component is timing –​that is, the development and taking up of the internet is continually changing with respect to the age of participants and the date of their engagement. The particular historical era (birth cohort) the young people are living in, the timing of their actions in the period when they are studied and the age they have reached will be critical shaping influences on how they respond to the internet and what form their response takes. The questions then become: When did they start using the internet? Which websites and social media do they use? Which social networks are they members of and to what extent do parents get involved in the timing and frequency of such social media use? Approaching the question of opportunities versus risks can be seen accordingly as merely confronting the challenges of life course construction generally in the context now of the digital society. Such terminology rightly plays in with that of the preceding influential idea of Ulrich Beck’s (1992) Risk Society. The idea was devised in response to the massive industrial transformations of the 1970s and 1980s based on the twin themes of individualisation and globalisation around which contemporary identity is constructed. A  full half a century was to elapse before digitalisation and the internet were conceived. But the idea of the risk society gets ever stronger, taking on added heuristic value in relation to the transforming world of the digital society. In this context the family becomes almost all that remains of societal continuity and cohesion. The opportunities reflected in these interactions are those which all families in the modern era –​post-​World War II –​have been forced to confront. Among the different groups of social actors there are major differences in the timing of internet take-​up and the duration of immersion. Interest may then turn to which games (especially boys) are likely to play once the teens are reached, with relatively little, if any, parental involvement. Next to these, there tend to be three different special kinds of connectivity: extracting knowledge from the internet to assist with, for example, homework; education, that is, learning online

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with or without teacher involvement; social networking, for example, exchanging text messaging via smartphones.

Social networking and social capital Social networking may seem to have little to do with family but can in fact be the necessary, largely hidden, arm of it, especially when proceedings run awry and are replaced by conflict. Turning to the last of these, as we saw in Chapter 2 (Ellison et al, 2006), the developmental effect of such networks lies in the personal and group impact they have on their members. In this context, such networking entails the presentation, formation and development of identity (or identities) experimentally through various forms of self-​expression and performance directed at other members of the network. Next and most importantly come the social benefits of linking to other network members to forge relationships of trust similar to the kind experienced with parents. A  sense of belonging can be cultivated, offering a certain amount of support as well as sharing of life events, thereby strengthening self-​esteem developed through staying connected with friends. A range of diverse activities and projects online and offline can follow. All such benefits have exceptional value for young people with disabilities (Wilson, 2016). As well as creating new forms of social reality, such networks can also be a major source of social capital –​capitalising as needed on parental connections –​that can be used in all the various endeavours, including family-​oriented activity, in which the young person is engaged. The links are likely to be going back to teachers as well as parents for checking internet sources. They can also help to build what is the other critical component of internet use: the analytic skills needed to appraise internet content at every level and create new content with added value for use personally and by others. As we shall see in the next chapter, a range of creative enterprises can include production of magazines and initiation of campaigns for heightening awareness of political challenges, such as climate change and global warming, and pressure on governments to act, as the 16-​year-​old Greta Thunberg’s global protest demonstrates. The extraordinary effectiveness of internet-​driven networking in converting such individual initiatives into worldwide campaigns takes political expression to global dimensions in a way that was unthinkable prior to the arrival of the internet. These are to a degree family affairs, though as a secondary effect, as the blessing if not involvement of parents is

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typically needed for the travelling that is likely to be an important factor in whether the protest as mass action happens.

False hopes An interesting phenomenon exemplifying high hopes that often fail to be realised in internet use and of central interest to families has been its value in extending teaching from the classroom to the bedroom. Such approaches as ‘distance learning’ were used successfully from the early days of Britain’s Open University. In company with predecessor schemes of computer-​assisted learning, especially directed at teenagers, the assumption was made that learning could be much enhanced if reinforced via this route. All that was needed was setting up computer-​ based exercises including use of the internet as a form of homework in which parents could act as supervisors. Such an approach can work under classroom conditions with the teacher playing the supportive as well as pedagogical role and backup from parents. Where it often fails is in attempts by teachers to place some of their teaching out of school, capitalising on the students’ computer or smartphone use. This would include setting homework tasks involving use of the internet. Such schemes rarely take off or fizzle out and are not valued by students. This is because use of computers or smartphones at home is seen by young people as primarily for social networking purposes as a leisure pursuit. Mixing it with school learning confuses these two purposes and simply does not work for them. The fact that internet activity, such as social networking, is fundamentally social means that young people tend to disregard it or downplay it to the point where it is seen as of no relevance to schoolwork at all. They can spend many hours daily on such social networking. Rather than teachers and parents viewing such activity in entirely negative terms, it is better to see it as replacing more effectively, and with more privacy and freedom, the desire to experiment. The traditional means of communication was with friends on the phone, at street corners or in youth and sports clubs under the supervision of adults, or in private spaces such as bedrooms. As we have seen and stressed throughout, use of social media for networking offers myriad opportunities for opening new friendships and influences on a wider basis. While parents may exercise light monitoring, with active intervention, including sanctions, always available as a last resort. There is also the added value of being free to move in or out of the network as desired rather than becoming permanently locked into it. Such features can be particularly valuable to relatively isolated young

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people, such as migrants or those with disabilities or living in state care. Sensitively managed, the network can be a haven for its participants, combining interpersonal recognition and liberation with safety, again a crucial parental role (Wilson, 2016).

Existential risks The other side of the story that of course concerns adults and particularly parents is perception of risks. Such risks reside not only at the level of deciding one course of action rather than another in the light of networking persuasion or receiving and absorbing false information. Cyber-​bullying is one of the most difficult risks to contain and control, with the potential to happen within a group of friends with or without expansion to new members. It can serve to separate out one or more members of the group from others, causing unhappiness and a sense of exclusion which can have adverse, sometimes devastating, psychological effects. Trolling follows in the footsteps of bullying of this kind in the sense that a network member or any friend or follower of an individual in the group can focus on supplying disruptive content to the network, directed at particular members. Such material typically described as ‘inappropriate’ often comprises racist, violent or pornographic content which can shift the direction of the group towards damaging experience. Sometimes its arrival may be accidental through misuse of terms or making mistakes in searching the internet for other purposes. Although most young people have experienced this kind of content in some way or another, the numbers seriously affected appear to be relatively small. But how this is judged tends to be coloured by the position taken in the opportunities versus risk debate. It again becomes a family issue. When does exposure to this kind of content become a serious threat to well-​being? Livingstone and Blum-Ross (2020) make the telling point that exposure to risk is part of growing up, especially in adolescence. On this basis social networking, rather than adding to risk, may, in the context of the wider group, actually be helping to head it off. They also reveal for the UK situation that while parents report a sense of anxiety and some conflict with their teenage children around media use, most believe that digital technologies have in fact reduced family tensions. Despite their anxieties, both parents and their teenage children are largely optimistic about the benefits they are gaining from digital devices. In the Livingstone and Blum-Ross survey, half of parents and teenagers describe themselves as addicted to their mobile device,

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while a third of teens (35 per cent) and two thirds of parents (63 per cent) think the other is addicted. Moreover, half of teenagers and half of their parents say they get distracted by mobile devices at least once a day. This estimate contrasts with the two thirds of parents who say their child gets distracted by internet use, as in ‘free time is screen time’. And screen time conflicts are common in today’s families with children and ranking as the most common source of conflict is mobile phone use. Such use comes ahead of household chores, helping around the house and keeping time. Yet three fifths of parents say their teenage children’s use of mobile devices is not harmful and has even helped their relationship, while almost all teenagers say the same of their parents’ mobile phone use. Children aged 9–​19 use the internet at least weekly; 90 per cent use it for schoolwork. Of the 20 uses listed, over half involve schoolwork and searching for information; another third receiving and sending email, and the rest involve playing computer games or use of instant messaging. Nevertheless, anxieties persist, and parents differ in the ways they respond to them. Livingstone and Blum-Ross (2020) identify three types of stance parents adopt in resisting digitalisation. ‘Embrace’, which means effectively matching their children’s digital interests by gaining personal and professional value from the internet for themselves; ‘balance’ is trying to control some digital practices and not others, that is, judging what is valuable and what is not; ‘resist’ rejects the idea of passive acceptance and rejects any digital incursion into the family home. The difficulty in getting these positions to hold is that in the digital case young people are likely to be well ahead of their parents in the technical handling of internet products and that the ever-​accelerating replacement by new beliefs and activities is likely to leave parents behind. Such experiences are of course not new to parents and are likely to continue. The difference is that the onus is on them to decide how best to accommodate what they do not fully understand and to find the optimum means of maximising the benefits while minimising the risks for all concerned. The more significant and disturbing aspect, that prompts parents’ fears, is inappropriate relationships with network members who can sometimes be adults posing as would-​be members. They may be joining the network with the aim of accessing particular members. This can sometimes be the beginning of a grooming process through which direct physical contact might be made and sometimes sexual activity offered or imposed at the final stage. Another more widespread problem is the feeding of false and misleading information to the network, either by accident or

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intentionally, that may lead to action of various kinds, described as toxic unicorns. Next to that is information that seems to lead nowhere or fails to connect with any other reference point of value to the group, known as echo chambers. In the worst form of these latter communications the messaging can be toxic, taking the recipient into a virtual world where their worst thoughts and fantasies can be realised, of which one horrific example is suicide.

Cultural and health challenges Another criticism goes much deeper in questioning the cultural, physiological and public health effects of the society the internet is creating. Patricia Greenfield (2019) reviews a range of communication technologies leading to and accompanying the transformation to the digital society. Youth (ages 15 to 24) is the most connected age group worldwide: 71 per cent are online compared with 48 per cent of the total population, with children and adolescents under 18 accounting for an astonishing one in three internet users around the world. The trend is also moving downwards in terms of ages. In some countries children under 15 are as likely to access the internet as adults over 25 (UNICEF, 2017). In accordance with Greenfield’s (2019) theory of change, each communication medium is linked to major overlapping cultural, social and behavioural shifts. Thus, text is linked to change in, first, cultural values and learning environment; second, cognitive development and decontextualised thought; third, literacy development; and, fourth, speech areas of the brain. Taking such trends much further in the same direction, Greenfield examines in turn the effect of print, television, video games, computers, teen chat rooms, multimedia television and mobile technologies including social networking. All these media combine to form the multi-​media communication systems of the digital society. Thus, the social networking effect can be seen in:  cost to family relations; the explosion of ‘friends’; the power of the ‘like’; the cost to well-​being; and the ubiquity of ‘social media’ values adapted to an urban, educated commercial and ethnically diverse world. Greenfield (2019) notes a steady decline of face-​to-​face contacts that besides communication brought with them a degree of help with skills acquisition and improvement, intimacy and social control. That is to say there is sanctioning or not of proposed activity. In place of these civilising benefits, Greenfield sees a general coarsening and growing dysfunctionality of social interaction in contemporary media communications. Positive emotions such as love and empathy

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are compromised, and under the mask of anonymity, their negative counterparts such as aggression, violence, intolerance, sexism, racism and cyber-​bullying can be given free reign. This appraisal raises a particular problem for parents, who in the worst-​case scenario may be faced with the challenge of finding a way of detaching their offspring from a network before it is too late.

Media education A complementary and more general concern with solutions is represented by David Buckingham (2008), a longstanding commentator on digital developments since their beginning. His book The Media Education Manifesto (2019), of much relevance to family concerns, reflects his passionately held belief that there has been a serious failure to acknowledge or recognise the effects of electronic media, especially of the social networking kind, on identity development and the impact on families. UK and German government priorities for internet education are seen much more in terms of imparting to young people the technical proficiency employers are seeking to give them access to jobs in the electronics and media industries. This approach is without seeing the need for building alongside the technical competence, critical understanding of internet outputs and the industries in which they are located. In Germany, Google and other IT giants are subsidising the digitalisation of schools and Microsoft is sponsoring an IT research institute at the Technical University in Munich. This educational approach should be seen as a complement to, and not a substitute for media regulation. On the contrary, media education needs, to be linked to broader movements for media reform ‘if we want a rich diverse and healthy media environment’ complemented by the knowledge and understanding that media education can provide (Buckingham, 2019, p 115). As Buckingham (2019) argues, there clearly need to be critical and discerning audiences. Audiences also deserve to be respected rather than merely exploited, of which families form the prime example. Therefore, media education should go beyond responding to ill-​ informed anxieties or problems from parents that are only poorly understood. Again, in Buckingham’s (2019, p 115) words: ‘We also need a much more comprehensive approach to understanding how media might be mobilised in the interests of the public good. In the process of doing this we need to recognise the limitations of what education itself can achieve’.

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The term ‘digital literacy’ used by Buckingham and such commentators as Livingstone and Blum-Ross (2020) is also used to stress what should be its centrality in a country’s national curriculum. But the connotations of literacy with language and the written word call into question whether such a term as ‘literacy’ does capture adequately media’s multifaceted features. In Buckingham’s terms, as a starting point the Manifesto would be to consider the internet as a basic public utility, ‘like a clean water supply’. No parent would be satisfied with polluted water. So why should we accept passively that fake information is tolerated on the internet? While all the major media organisations are run by private companies motivated by profit such enlightened thinking is difficult to imagine. In some countries such as China curtailing the internet’s development has been in place from its beginning. But how far are we prepared to sacrifice the freedom, which is the price we would have to pay for controlling it? The vast profits made in these largely unregulated industries, which on a world scale put the gold rushes of the past into the shade, should be questioned and Buckingham believes taxation should be used to redirect the profits to the creation of a truly civilised digital society. Such a move would involve challenging the claims of the companies involved that all they are doing is providing platforms for content producers to exploit. He argues that they should take editorial responsibility, as for any other kind of publishing. This would include regulation to abolish hate speech and harassment, as well as the elimination of ‘fake news’. The companies’ exploitation for profit of the personal (Big) data collected from internet use also requires a major rethink and universal control. Such moves are already underway to standardise the approach to the media education that should supply the foundations for such regulation, in which the position of families play a central part. And such initiatives as the EU’s ‘Better Internet for Kids, Policy Map’, ‘European ICT Coalition for Children Online’ and UNICEF’s ‘Approach to Digital Health’ and ‘Children in a Digital World’ have been in place for some time. The rising political populism, fuelled by internet-​driven ‘fake news’ and inflammatory online posting, is not a sufficient explanation for the violence characterising today’s society. But this does not mean that little should be done to inhibit the promotion of activity that reflects it, which includes in Britain the newly arrived scourge of knife crime, and the savage murder of Member of Parliament Jo Cox for her views in support of Asian immigrants. Similar attacks have

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been executed by German right-​wing terrorists directed at Jews and politicians of democratic parties. The interest of free speech allows all sides of a political argument to have the opportunity to be heard. But the online environment in which this happens offers ready-​made opportunities for disseminating hate messages and, as a communications platform, has frequently been abused. There is a case for continuous monitoring by parents and educators to ensure that the negative, risk laden, defamatory and toxic aspects of social media do not supplant the good. As well as connectivity, the target must be ‘digital health’. Young people are of course ideal targets for propaganda, which is why the counter-​messages underpinned by parental guidance must be a major part of the internet experience as well.

Conclusion The life course approach derived from Glen Elder’s (1974/​79) work on the effects on children of the 1930s Great Depression was adopted here as a conceptual framework to identify comparability and difference in relation to how digitalisation effects family relations. The advent of digitalisation highlights the key factors of linked lives and agency, in how young people and the generation they are moving into are relating to others, making sense of their world and acting politically. The response of young people to climate change and its potentially devastating effects on the future of the planet exemplifies a form of mobilisation across the world. Most importantly, the action inspired by such challenges brings together not only young people but also their families in ways that could not have happened without internet-​driven social media. Such media successes in terms of the public good need to be set against the internet’s more negative features. We see the weakening of face-​to-​face communications and relationships, the lack of restraints in online social interactions, the social networking of dysfunctional emotions and ideological messaging. These can only be to the detriment of a democratic society, with potentially devastating consequences. Two views were explored –​one broadly in favour of the benefits the internet can bring in all areas of domestic, social and economic life and in the developments of identity. The other emphasised the dangers of ignoring the negative aspects of social media pointing towards the need for a major education programme to moderate current excesses and making the case for a core subject devoted to the issue in the national curriculum. The Media Education Manifesto sets out a path to follow and the need for its extension internationally, in which the family would be

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centrally involved. Despite the advantages in the development of the internet there is at times a feeling of unleashing a demon into family and community life with little recognition of the consequences. And these threats are only likely to mount as information technology and its entrepreneurs continue to take the social media possibilities ever further. The possibility of such a corrective programme and why it is needed will be a major theme of the final chapters.

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Political participation, mobilisation and the internet Political issues are increasingly communicated in the electronic media, while newspapers and television have become less frequently used for building and exchanging opinions, especially among young people. Therefore, this chapter examines the expansion of online use and the extent to which there is interest in European and national political developments. It focuses on young people’s perceptions of political issues, their involvement in social networking, and the spread of new youth movements around climate change in Germany and in support of the Labour Party in the UK.

The role of the internet The UK and Germany are among the countries with the highest rate of IT users in the EU: 95 per cent of the British population and 92 per cent of the Germans. Being online is ubiquitous, almost everyone has been using the internet as the most frequent means of communication in the past decade. Whereas 73 per cent of people over the age of 10 used the internet in 2009, it was 88 per cent in 2019 in Germany (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2020). While all pupils and students, that is teenagers and young adults, were online for many hours a day, only two thirds of pensioners used it at all. Internet activities for private purposes differ by age, too: 89 per cent of the 16 to 24 age group use it for messages on social networks or chat rooms and searching for information on goods and services. The difference between the younger and older generations regarding internet activities is remarkable: whereas among people older than 65 only 19 per cent use the internet for networking, the majority use it for collecting information. This shows the shift in focal interests over the life course. The 2019 German Youth Study (Albert, Hurrelmann and Quenzel, 2019) summarised the research with this statement: ‘Society is perceived (by youth) online’. Digital channels are preferred over analogue media, while newspapers and TV are rarely used. Almost all Germans aged

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10 to 44 use the internet and 14–​29-​year-​olds are connecting with social media for six hours a day. UK figures from the Labour Force Survey (Office for National Statistics, 2011, 2019) use different metrics but arrive at similar conclusions. Virtually all adults aged 16 to 44 in the UK were recent internet users (99 per cent) in 2019, compared with 47 per cent of adults aged 75 years and over. Only 7.5 per cent of adults had never used the internet, down from 8.4 per cent in 2018. In 2018, 95 per cent of adults aged 16 to 74 years in the UK were recent internet users, the third highest rate in the EU. The generation gap in internet use has been narrowing; while there has been little change for adults aged 16–​44 in recent years, there has continued to be growth in internet use among older adults. Since the survey began in 2011, adults aged 75 years and over have consistently been the lowest users of the internet. However, recent internet use in the 65–​74 years age group increased from 52 per cent in 2011 to 83 per cent in 2019, closing the gap on younger age groups. The internet companies promise a wide-​open field for communication and information; for instance, in 2018 Google declared in an advertisement that knowledge never could be acquired as freely, easily and democratically: now the individual has the assignment to pick out the best of all possibilities. In order to select the best and most reliable information for making sense of political trends young people need a ‘toolbox’ comprising criteria that reflect value orientations, evaluation standards and skills for comparing information. Such a toolbox develops by experience and interaction with parents, peers and teachers. Its instruments derive from political socialisation and thus are related to social background, education, individual preferences and opinion leaders. The public discourse in the digital and analogue media about issues and political programmes that concern the younger generation’s living, learning and working circumstances and future life chances also impacts on the frame and content of the toolbox. Identifying the recipients’ potential for understanding and assessing political messages is an important, albeit underrated, task of political education. The ongoing crises in domestic and international politics and the sober predictions about the impact of climate change  –​and most recently of the COVID-​19 pandemic –​has diminished the quality of life and optimism regarding the future. There have been widespread insecurities among young people, who are at a loss about the complacency of national governments and international organisations regarding their future and that of the coming generations.

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This fearful and angry state of mind has been a source of stress among young people (Albert, Hurrelmann and Quenzel, 2019; Pickard, 2019) and some are becoming susceptible to populist agendas that promise easy solutions to complex problems on a global scale. Political leaders and parties that denounce environmental protection and the young people’s protest movements are also active in the social media, attempting to infiltrate young people’s mindsets and emotions. Comparative research points at changes in political participation in the UK and Germany. Membership in formal organisations is declining and informal practices, centred on events, flash mobs, public meetings and protest marches, are increasing. The favourite channel for collecting and exchanging information for coordination and planning political activities is social media (see Albert, Hurrelmann and Quenzel, 2019; Sloam and Henn, 2019). This raises the question whether citizenship norms and behaviour are changing in the context of young people’s use of social media also for political purposes, for example being targeted with nationalist propaganda by extremist parties. We ask whether there is a chance of an ‘online democracy’ or if we will see a shift towards circles (chat rooms) of closed communication, focusing on the circulation of untested opinions that are reinforced by ‘likes’ as a spontaneous reaction with little reflection. There is little research about the frequency and content of communicating about political issues via social media. According to Vromen, Xenos and Loader (2015), there has been an increase in exchanging political attitudes via social media in the past decade, a statement which also holds for Germany (Albrecht, Hurrelmann and Quenzel, 2019). The mobilisation of young people arises from issue-​driven involvements, changing recently from war and peace and economic inequality to climate protection. The grassroots Momentum movement that originated in the UK in the election campaign of Jeremy Corbyn for Labour leadership in 2015/​16 was an example of a new ‘do-​it-​ourselves’ approach to political participation which attracted many young Britons (Pickard, 2019). As the Fridays for Future (FfF) movement that originated in Sweden in 2018 indicates, the age of organisers and participants has been declining:  schoolchildren (teenagers) and students (young adults) are mobilised with the focus on demanding global protection of the climate. Level of education, institutional contexts (school, university, apprenticeship), location (city, small towns) and time budgets make a difference in participation. The relatively small, but influential number of activists come from educated families and only a few apprentices

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and young workers are involved. Furthermore, group affiliations and self-​organised social media networks contribute to mobilising young people to participate in protest marches on Fridays. Is increased mobilisation of youth a sign of alienation from the political system  –​party politics and government? This is difficult to answer. There is widespread dissatisfaction and a pessimistic view of the willingness of policy makers for a turn-​around and of adults at large to change their way of life. Though many youths are more observer or spectator than activist, their behaviour indicates that alienation does not lead to a wide-​raging withdrawal from the democratic system. Young people in Germany and the UK share the opinion with most adults that the political machinery is operating at a slow pace in reducing and regulating the pollution of the environment. The likely economic and social outcomes of Brexit, though fading in people’s consciousness, remains an issue of continuing concern. Surveys in the UK document that young people were concerned about the effects of austerity measures, student fee increases, housing, public transport and less about the environment (Sloam and Henn, 2019). Instead they were turning to alternative styles of participation. However, they were poorly informed about the pros and cons of the EU, which may have contributed to their low participation rate (30 per cent) in the Brexit referendum. The influence of the level of education on the vote is remarkable: 71 per cent with a university degree wanted the UK to remain in the EU, against only 34 per cent with a GCSE (Sloam and Henn, 2019). UK public opinion was characterised by the threat of migration and the goal of taking back control from the EU. The ‘Leave’ campaign was much more prominent in the social media than the ‘Remain’ supporters. Here we see the connection of social background and suggestibility in the world of digital communication. The context of mobilisation is influenced by public opinion, media, parties, unions and the government on the one side and civic organisations on the other, which distribute their frequently contradicting messages online in order to reach a wide audience. This engagement opens the door to simple, popular solutions, false promises, one-​sided points of view and ‘fake news’, which are difficult to penetrate, not only for young people. The 2019 Youth Study (Albert, Hurrelmann and Quenzel, 2019) shows a wide-​ranging annoyance about the political elite in Germany: 71 per cent of the respondents assumed that the politicians do not care about what ‘people like me’ are thinking.

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Interest in European and national political issues The EU and UN are offering opportunities to increase youth participation by organising international youth conferences aiming to promote the idea of EU or even global citizenship. In an ethnographic study (Kwon, 2019), participants in such meetings expressed dissatisfaction about their limited influence on the proceedings and outcomes of such institutionalised events. Participating in elections, however, tells us more about youth’s intentions. Young people’s (aged 18–​24) participation rate was 46.9 per cent in the May 2019 EU elections in Germany, compared to only 28 per cent in 2014. The top issues were concern about climate change, the economy, human rights and democracy (European Commission, 2019). These issues had an impact on the success of the Green Party, which doubled its popular support from 2014 (10.7 per cent) to 20.3 per cent in 2019. The younger generation in the UK had a much lower participation rate: According to a post-​election survey, only 24.5 per cent of the 18–​24 age group and 29.5 per cent of young adults (aged 25–​39) participated in the May 2019 EU elections (European Commission, 2019). The Brexit Party gained 31.5 of the general population’s votes. This shows a widespread dissatisfaction about the EU, its institutions and its contribution to British society. According to Sloam and Henn (2019), the EU-​scepticism among UK youth comes in two versions:  nationalists call for independence (Leave), while cosmopolitans demand more social and economic regulation of markets (Remain and improve society). The EU Horizon 2020 programme called ‘constructing active citizenship with European Youth. Policies, practices, challenges, and solutions’ is putting skill development (talents), productivity (resources), protection (vulnerability) and controlling (problem makers) on the agenda (European Commission, 2018a). This expression of intent did not deal with policy issues that young people regard as urgent, such as climate change (see also Chapter 3). There is positive response to the demands of FfF, though, by the new European Commission which initiated a Green Deal programme in 2020. Nevertheless, it is encouraging that the overall participation in the 2019 EU-​28 elections was surprisingly high (50.6 per cent), with a lower turnout among the 18–​24 age group (41.5 per cent), signalling that less than half of them intended to turn their feeling of alienation in a political direction. Many voted for candidates of the Green Party while the conservative and social democratic parties lost votes.

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Whereas 36 per cent of the young voters endorsed the Green Party in Germany, compared to 20.5 per cent of all voters, only 5 per cent voted for the right-​wing AfD party, compared to 11 per cent of all German voters (Infratest, 2019). This voting pattern documents that the well-​designed presentation of the AfD in social media only attracted a few young voters. There is an overriding concern about the issue of environment protection, which has been neglected by governments and industries, and a loss of credibility for the older generations as promoters of measures for a clean environment. The German government, however, finally passed legislation for climate protection at the end of 2019 after long and controversial debates with the goal to reduce CO2 emissions by 2030. When comparing the UK and German landscapes of political issues that young people are concerned about, there are obvious differences. The Germans are focused on the environment, educational and social equality, and the contract between generations. Furthermore, there has been a declining trust in the ‘old’ conservative and social democratic parties’ (CDU and SPD) capacity for future-​oriented policy making. The young Britons also do not put trust in the political elites but are more concerned about austerity, living conditions, cost of education, housing and –​of course –​the consequences of Brexit on their lives. These different world views are rooted in a long-​standing pragmatic social partnership between business, unions and government (soziale Marktwirtschaft, or social market economy) in Germany and a cleavage of conservative and social democratic policy programmes and practices in the UK, where a ‘grand coalition’ between Tory and Labour, as in Germany, would be impossible, mainly because of the electoral system (‘winner takes all’). A major issue concerning young people’s perception of the political elite is that in Germany the declining popularity of the conservatives and social democrats results from their double-​bind in the Great Coalition (Grosse Koalition) since 2005, which shows signs of stagnation. Chancellor Angela Merkel is in the ultimate stage of her career and will not be a candidate for the elections in 2021. In this situation, the Green Party has become a convincing political alternative, attracting many young voters; it succeeded in adding civil liberties, immigration, the EU and social policy to its basically environmental programme. In the UK, the Remainers finally lost, Boris Johnson got elected as prime minister, and Labour has elected a new leader, Kier Starmer. This political landscape does not seem to be opening up quite as much to meet the needs of the younger generation. In contrast with Germany,

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the Green Party attracts votes, but the election system effectively prevents the election of minority parties, which puts off many young people from voting for them. In modern times only one MP has broken this rule: Caroline Lucas, the popular Green Party leader, who has been a member of parliament in a Brighton constituency for the last 12 years, usually with an increased vote. In consequence there are only two main parties  –​Labour and Conservative –​that can hope to gain anything from a general election –​ even though each minority party can register, by continental standards, large numbers of votes –​well over a million. The rare exception is the occasional maverick candidate who builds up popular support around a protest issue triggered by a by-​election. They may win the parliamentary seat, typically only to lose it again when the next general election comes around. The now handful of Liberal-​Democrat MPs tend to succeed in rural and more remote areas like Cornwall and the Outer Hebrides islands, where there is a strong tradition of, recently depleted, Liberal party support. And, of course, there is the relatively new Brexit party, including the founder and leader Nigel Farage, whose main, if not only experience of national electoral success, has been in the European Parliament. It needs to be said that none of this applies in Scotland, where the Scottish Nationalist Party has held most of the seats for some years with a broad left agenda and mission, endorsed by young people, of Scottish independence. Wales similarly has a strong nationalist party but has yet to match the heights of Scottish nationalism. Again, the youth vote supporting nationalism has played a growing and critical part in the nationalist agenda. All such parties have gained a striking boost since the arrival of digitalisation, in which the major parties, especially the conservatives, have now caught up. Such developments are common across European countries and were pioneered in such countries as Italy (Gerbardo, 2019) and Sweden (Lindgren, 2017).

Social media and political advertising As indicated earlier, political parties tend to send messages via online campaigns shortly before elections instead of organising a steady dialogue directed at young people. Attracting voters by micro-​targeting aims at certain groups of users with similar persuasions and interests, for example age, education, gender, and also followers of conspiracy theories. Such messages and ads get distributed in networks and

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create the impression of representing the political mainstream. This procedure resembles the strategy of online marketing by prominent young people, so-​called ‘influencers’, opinion leaders and role models, who attract teenagers and young adults in matters of fashion, music and lifestyle. Firms sell their products via role models and digital assistants that combine videos into personalised offers of make-​up, fitness and music. Most successful in this business is ‘TikTok’, a Chinese platform of short, fun and creative videos, an app shared by teenagers all over the world. On the surface such an app is not a platform for political messages; however, it is notable that it originates in China, a state with the highest control of its citizens in the world. This raises the question about adequate mental and emotional equipment –​the ‘toolbox’ -​providing criteria for penetrating the hidden intentions included in social media messages, supporting the selection and comparison of credible and useful information from different sources. If young people have assembled a toolbox for distinguishing truthful from fake information, and information from advertising, they should be able to resist misleading political messages. A recent case of opinion shaping by the 27-​year-​old German influencer, called ‘Rezo’, who has many followers on his YouTube music and comedy channel, is a remarkable contrast to the usual fun-​and-​games industry. In a long video he analysed and criticised the politics of the conservative party CDU with enormous public resonance among youth. The video had been watched 18 million times as of September 2019. Dealing with social media in a responsible way is an urgent issue: young people in Germany enter the internet as the main source of information by using the smartphone up to 3.7 hours a day, and they spend less time with family and friends (Albert, Hurrelmann and Quenzel, 2019). Nevertheless, 41 per cent are interested in political information, although more are interested in entertainment and gaming. As highlighted in previous chapters, education makes a difference: half of the secondary school students moving towards the higher education pathway (Gymnasium) regard politics as an important topic, compared with only one quarter in the lower level (High School) group. Social media are the forum for exchanging political attitudes and assessments of political trends. This function carries the risk of a populist agenda, that is, of receiving simple answers to political questions. Though open minds dominate among young people in Germany, the 2019 Youth Study found ambivalent orientations among the respondents –​while supportive of democracy, there was also distrust of the government. Some (10 per cent) were convinced that the state cared

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more about refugees than needy Germans. This opinion is a component of a right-​wing syndrome –​of feeling left behind, being directed by others, combined with antisemitic as well as anti-​migration attitudes. Almost a third of the younger generation is leaning towards populist and nationalist opinions –​more in the former GDR (East Germany), than in the west of Germany. In the east, there is still resentment about the ‘takeover’ by the capitalist political and economic system of the west after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Such orientations are fuelled by the anti-​EU and anti-​migration party AfD, which gained most of the opposition seats in the German parliament in the federal elections of 2018. With 24 per cent of the vote, this party was also the favourite among voters aged 18–​25 in the October 2019 election in the former East German federal state of Thuringia. This reflects an attempt to preserve identity, motivated by an aspiration for respect. It also reflects a mix of an underdog mentality, rejection of strangers and a backward-​looking culture. There is still hope, however, that this stance characterises only a minority of the young voters, the majority of whom (75 per cent) voted for democratic parties. This orientation nevertheless indicates an emotional and mental segmentation of the political milieus of young nationalists and open-​minded young people. Between them is a large section of more-​or-​less indifferent democrats who tend to accept the current state of affairs. A more differentiated configuration of orientations is presented in a typology of young populists: the 2019 Youth Study (Albrecht, Hurrelmann and Quenzel, 2019)  distinguished five categories according to their orientation towards refugees, cultural diversity and Germany’s migration politics:  15 per cent of those surveyed were labelled ‘cosmopolitans’, 27 per cent as open-​minded, 28 per cent were not clearly positioned, 24 per cent were classified as leaning towards populist opinions, and 9 per cent as nationalist populists. There is the well-​known link of education to open-​mindedness:  the higher the level of education, the less are populist opinions endorsed, in contrast to young people with little education and poor employment prospects. Therefore, the strategy of internet advertising by populist parties which is directed at young voters should become a topic for political education. The right-​wing party AfD has developed an efficient way of distributing its nationalist and anti-​migration messages via social media. Such messages may attract young people who feel that they are not respected and are looking for alternative identity markers. The rise of cosmopolitical attitudes was also a theme of a recent study by Sloam and Henn (2019) in the UK. Their book in the new

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series ‘Palgrave Studies on Young People and Politics’ focused on the changing cultural values of British youth, which ‘dramatically altered the British political landscape’ (Sloam and Henn, 2019, p 2) with effect from the general election in 2017, as described in their book title Youthquake (see also OCED, 2017). The authors suggest that age has replaced social class as the differentiating context of political decisions by young people. This change is attributed to the spreading of post-​ materialist values among educated youth (see Norris and Inglehart, 2018). This cultural shift is said to be creating alternative styles of political participation. Sloam and Henn (2019, p 39) also claim that ‘young cosmopolitans have crystallised into a distinct and coherent political force’. This conclusion, however, is based on a culturalist notion of behaviour change which does not take into account the different contexts of political mobilisation. Nor does it account for the impact of social media, educational institutions and labour market conditions on young people’s perceptions of the political system and its representatives. These contexts were also transformed, for example, by the result of the recent general election and the structural effects of Brexit, which questions the assumption that post-​materialist values have a long-​term effect on youth’s perceptions of populist messages. Thus, it will be necessary to monitor the consequences of national and EU regulations concerning the traffic on the internet in curbing the flooding of social media by populist messages. There have been many attempts by national governments and EU programmes to regulate the transmission of political propaganda by means of ‘fake news’ distributed through the internet, though with little success. Twitter, however, decided in October 2019 no longer to transmit such messages, whereas Facebook maintains its position not to curtail the freedom of speech, whatever its contents.

New youth movements in the making: Fridays for Future and Momentum A growing number of young people are supporting and even joining the Fridays for Future (FfF) movement initiated by the Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg in autumn 2018. Their goal is to pressure governments, businesses and citizens to act against environment pollution. International organisations such as the EU and the UN are listening, and the German government recently passed climate protection legislation. The movement has been gaining support from a wide range of civil society.

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According to a survey of ZEIT Campus Magazine (8 August 2019), more than half of the FfF followers are under 20 years and comprise more young women than young men. Though only 3 per cent of those aged 15–​24 are activists participating in protests on Fridays, their impact on German society is tangible. For instance, FfF managed to mobilise the German Union of Service Employees to participate in a nationwide protest march in September 2019 demanding a pro-​active climate protection policy from the German government. A similar movement has sprung into motion in the UK in connection with the election of the Labour party leadership. The labour activist group Momentum succeeded in targeting and mobilising young people in favour of Jeremy Corbyn for party leader. Similar to the FfF, a sizable proportion of members and supporters are pupils and students. Particularly appealing to young people has been the use of social media to contact members and potential supporters and to coordinate their efforts in canvassing for Labour in elections and getting them to register to vote themselves. The non-​hierarchical approach to political meetings and organisations and the possibility of establishing and managing new local and regional groups is similar again to the FfF movement in Germany and in other EU countries. A more militant group, ‘Youth Rebellion’, is mobilising young people for campaigns that concern climate change, especially global warming, and the sustainability of human life on earth. Under the name ‘Extinction Rebellion’, they have also become active in Germany, where they are mainly run by young adults experienced in the staging of protests. Momentum succeeded in heading off the feelings of alienation about Labour party structure and practices. In contrast to the FfF, it has not been issue-​driven but centred around the social programme of innovative and Labour party politics. Therefore, it is doubtful whether it will have a wider and lasting impact on young people’s political opinions and activities in the wake of the general election of 12 December 2019. They became active again, however, by protesting against the government’s health policy in relation to the fight against the COVID-​19 pandemic. The success story of the FfF and of Momentum indicates a remarkable change in the relationship of generations:  a youth movement is mobilising many adults, civil organisations and politicians in Germany and the UK by creating a new public consciousness about the endangered environment and the need for political action to maintain democracy. Though it is premature to say so, it is likely that the FfF will be comparable in its societal impact with the international 1968

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political movement, led by students, directed at cultural and institutional reforms (‘Free Speech’) and the US war in Vietnam. It is remarkable, though, that the FfF movement has been initiated and was followed by teenagers and young adults –​a phenomenon that sends the message of reducing the voting age to 16.

Political education as enlightenment about the digital media Young people use the internet to search for information and collect feedback for their self-​presentations. Identity construction (see Chapter 5) implies also finding out which political orientation will express their values and corresponds to the social networks they are members of, including face-​to-​face but more often by artificial/​virtual communication. Facebook collects user data in a timeline –​a kind of publicly visible life history or a bio-​chronicle of everything a user has been occupied with online. This tracking is creating a social document that indicates who you are by registering what you are doing where and when. It is likely that many young users are not able to estimate the risks of such documents for their future life course, especially in the employment system. Facebook is collecting its users’ data while promising to keep the private data secure. By highlighting that friends and family come first, it moves the public sphere into the background, which reduces the importance of political issues. This business strategy creates the illusion of privacy by covering up Facebook’s capitalist surveillance system (Zuboff, 2019) that serves to attract users online to be targeted as potential customers. Schools and colleges do not do enough to develop digital competence, which means more than learning how to use a smartphone for self-​ presentation via YouTube or Instagram, collecting information and operating apps. Digital media contribute to the political mobilisation of youth by combining entertainment and information. On Facebook, YouTube and Instagram there are many sources with questionable credentials that distribute conspiracy theories, ‘fake news’ or commercially motivated advice, based on faked authenticity. Adapting the AI metaphor of deep learning to the natural intelligence of young people, a concept of ‘Deep Human Learning’ about social media would mean gaining media competence, programming skills, knowledge about the basics of artificial intelligence and data protection. This implies that educators promote learning processes focused on using the internet for democratic participation, developing debating skills

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and, most urgent, for representing their aims and doubts concerning political programmes and decisions –​in one phrase: promoting political agency. This would build the courage to speak up, to express dissenting opinions in both the real world and the virtual world of social media communication in chatrooms. Young people must be alerted to a serious problem connected with the prominence and belief in AI: artificial intelligence per se cannot be made responsible for its results; the IT experts and their employers, companies, and governments are in charge. This hidden power of institutions and lobby groups is not yet a topic in public debate which deals more with economic risks, interest rates, innovation and start-​ups. The prospects of youth and an active citizenship culture depend on their ability to penetrate the surface/​interface of man –​machine systems, to understand the pros and cons of AI, and the impact of biographical tracking of preferences, for example, the time spent on certain topics, videos and merchandise. It is possible for youth with a precarious path to adulthood to construct a virtual parallel world, compensating negative experiences by positive online feedback (‘likes’) or internet games. According to the WHO this may very well lead to an evasion of real-​life challenges –​ an indicator of media dependency. Though heavy online use has not yet been labelled as an addictive disorder, it leads to an impairment of social, face-​to-​face activities and to withdrawing from everyday responsibilities (see Chapter 5). Young people’s media competence is unevenly distributed. There are social and cultural inequalities in digital skills, and most users only have basic knowledge. A minority deals with the internet in a sophisticated way. This digital divide mirrors social class and level of education and affects the opportunities of labour market participation. Media competence is also needed in the gig economy, where young people are using apps to sell their labour for on-​demand, short-​term, underpaid jobs on platforms as described in the UK government’s review of employment practices (Taylor, 2017). These digital service jobs do not have institutional protection and the workers are responsible for developing and maintaining their marketing value (see Kalleberg, 2011). In addition to promoting digital competence, engagement of young people in the political discourse must be improved in order to increase their participation in elections. Lowering the voting age to 16 has been proposed by several organisations and youth researchers in Germany (for example, Bertelsmann Foundation, 2015; Hurrelmann and Quenzel, 2019). Combined with citizenship education at school, visits to national

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and regional parliaments and young people’s representation in local decision-​making bodies, participating in political activities is expected to become more popular. In a wider sense, the aim of political education should be to engage young people in ‘moral dialogues’ (Etzioni, 1997) about social cohesion and the individual potential to get involved. To promote such an agenda, national governments and the European Commission have proposed youth strategies that provide infrastructure, educational expertise and resources for increasing young people’s input into political decisions. Starting such a strategy with getting involved in citizens’ networks regarding the quality of life in neighbourhoods and the local community, for example concerning public transport, housing and migrants, would mean linking youth’s common sense with the common good. An afterthought about the positive function of the internet: to fight the COVID-​19 pandemic most governments worldwide decided to close schools and all other educational organisations in March 2020. Many parents were working from home, and pupils and students were also studying at home, learning by digitalised assignments supplied by teachers. This procedure, however, raised the issue of social inequality because it may handicap pupils whose families do not have the necessary electronic equipment and are unable or unprepared to help their children do their homework.

Conclusion Youth prospects are related to the possibility of participating in the political process, which is increasingly organised via social media. This chapter highlighted the importance of the internet as provider of both truthful and fake information and the need to educate young people about the hidden business mechanisms and propaganda intentions as drawbacks of using and relying on social media. Media competence must be developed early on and organised in a ‘toolbox’ which young people can apply to understand and not just simply use social media. Developing the competence to examine content, credibility and intention of messages is an urgent agenda for schools in view of the spreading of populist messages via social media. As surveys have shown, young people’s interest in national and European issues has been increasing in the context of recent elections in the UK, Germany and the EU. Social media are a source of activation, which transmit political messages from parties and social movements. The enormous popularity of new youth movements and their impact

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on climate and environmental policy is an encouraging sign of the younger generation’s concern with our societies’ futures. Since digital media are also transmitting fake information and carry hidden political and economic interests, we plead for educating young people for a self-​critical use of the internet.

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8

Impact of COVID-​19 on youth We turn now to probably the biggest challenge of our time, the destructive force of COVID-​19, of which the long-​term implications for young people may turn out to be the most significant. Of course, we have no means of knowing how long the pandemic will last, including the possibility of its return or another virus of even greater virulence. All we can be sure of is that a shadow has been cast over the generation most directly affected in terms of life chances, for which significant investment will be needed to put in place the necessary safeguards to protect young people’s futures. In the best case scenario the virus effects are a temporary phenomenon for which only a handful of young people have been damaged by the experience. In the worst case the whole generation is significantly affected, of which those in the process of leaving school, facing examinations and seeking work risk losing most. At the same time, to take a more optimistic view, with analogies from the post-​ World War II period, it is also possible that the shakeup brought about by the pandemic will trigger new thinking and practice in education and other public services. Long-​term critics of the status quo have an unexpected opportunity to be heard. But such development is critically dependent on ensuring that change moves in liberating and progressive rather than regressive directions; that is to say, matching the digitalisation transformation that preceded COVID-​19. Surprisingly, and encouragingly, public opinion polls in both the UK and Germany appeared to favour not returning to ‘things as they were’. In the meantime, society has experienced the world of lockdown and social distancing with the consequence of devastating threats to the economy and risks taken in every attempt by government to ameliorate them. Previous chapters have highlighted key areas, where the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic have brought various forms of disruption, some of which are likely to become permanent. Here we consider what has been learned about the effects of the virus in broad terms and what might be expected to happen next. Each of the following topics reflects issues that needed resolution ahead of arrival

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of COVID-​19 but were then further compounded by the action taken to control its spread. What issues do they raise for youth prospects?

COVID-​19 and youth prospects Youth prospects in Europe have been severely threatened by the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in February 2020. All governments developed measures for containing the spread of the virus, with intervention in all spheres of everyday life, including education. The standard model was and still is the lockdown, focusing on social distancing and the wearing of facemasks. For young people, stay-​at-​ home rules were combined with closure of educational institutions, interruption of employment and curtailment of working hours. For those who could not set up an office and undertake online learning at home the experience was a damaging disruption of their lives. At present (November 2020)  it is an open question whether the impact of the lockdown on young people will lead to long-​term generational disadvantage. We assume that the longer restricted access to schools, further and higher education, training and work continues, the more the consequences of social inequality will be felt. The uneven distribution of the material and social resources necessary for coping with the restrictions on education and employment opportunities and health risks reflect the structure of social inequality and the distribution of life chances. Though Britain and Germany mobilised their efforts for fighting the virus, and the effects on families and firms, disadvantaged families were the most likely to pay the price of basic insecurity and deterioration of living standards that the lockdown entailed, to which young people were especially vulnerable. Because the consequences of lockdown affected all elements of the life course, we consider the interactions of family, education, employment and identity (see Settersten et al, 2020). Although young people carry a lower risk of getting seriously infected than older people, by the early teens young people’s immunity is already less certain. What follows, as British statistician David Spiegelhalter demonstrated in the UK Guardian newspaper in July 2020, is increasing vulnerability to the virus with every additional year of life. However, individuals of all ages were affected by the restrictions governments imposed concerning social distancing and freedom of movement. The lockdown intensified pre-​existing material, social and emotional problems, as a recent study by the University of Leipzig (Germany) shows. Nine hundred school students were surveyed twice in May 2020, from which it was found that the young people from disadvantaged

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family backgrounds reported more distress compounded by the loss of a daily and weekly timetable. Such lack of orientation and emotional security parallels adult experience of long-​lasting unemployment. The consequences of COVID-​19 are thus manifested at a number of levels, ranging from temporary absence of established activities, familiar routines and expectations to a transformation of behaviour and identity in response to fundamental changes in lived experience and the interactions with others that this entails. Such interactions embrace the family, peers, school, college and workplace, all of which were temporarily proscribed. Inevitably, predicting the consequences of short-​term disruptions can be misleading and the long-​term transformations are impossible to fathom. However, one likely effect of social isolation is the disruption of plans and timing regarding pathways in education, training and employment.

Labour market We can expect to confront a continuing fracturing of the labour market as unemployment rises above the expected levels for young people, regardless of qualifications, past occupational experience and politicians’ attempts to prevent such consequences of lockdown. The OECD (2020) predicts that unemployment rates will double in 2020 from 5.3 per cent to 9.4 per cent in industrialised service societies. Provisional figures for the UK, now facing the worst economic performance since records began, suggests 30 per cent unemployment can be expected as the norm for some time for 18–​22-​year-​olds and is likely to be permanent at 15 per cent for the older generation of workers. For Germany, the Federal Work Agency (IAB, 2020) reports a total unemployment rate of 6.2 per cent and a rate of 5.9 per cent for 15–​ 25-​year-​olds in June 2020. These German rates are relatively low, due to the well-​coordinated measures combating the virus, a reliable public health system, subsidised short-​term work (Kurzarbeit) and two large financial support packages for business. However, in both countries it will be the younger generations that are likely to bear the brunt of unemployment effects alongside adult women and migrants. According to findings posted by the UK’s Resolution Foundation (Gustafsson, 2020), based on previous large-​scale economic shocks arising from the 2008 ‘Great Recession’ one in ten young people aged 15 to 24 (average 19) may expect to suffer long-​term unemployment. Almost one in ten jobs held by workers under 30 were lost in the countries most affected by the 2008 recession, followed by a period of stagnation with lasting negative effects for future employment. The

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data also predict a decimation of youth earnings. In May 2020 one in four 18–​20-​year-​olds in the UK were already earning less than before the outbreak of COVID-​19. And this assessment was in a period when large numbers were still in ‘furlough’, that is, 80 per cent of their previous earnings paid by the state. Declining income is also hurting German workers and their families, caused by short-​term reduced wages and work times, and job losses with effects lasting for many years. A recent study in Germany about the income effects of COVID-​19 also shows that young people have been hurt much more than adults: half of the 18–​29-​year-​olds surveyed reported income losses, compared to just below one sixth of over 60-​ year-​olds (Nielsen Survey, 2020).

Education and training The loss of the school environment and direct teaching reduced learning time by half for German students (Wößmann, 2020) and it will be a risky gamble on their fitness to open educational institutions after the summer vacation. Parents and young people are doubtful how the day-​to-​day teaching will work in the context of ongoing restrictions. In secondary schools wearing facemasks has become mandatory. The UK approach focused more on bringing pupils back to the classroom at the first opportunity, with the youngest arriving first, followed through the summer by those at the primary and secondary compulsory stages to age 16, starting in September. A particular feature causing much uncertainty and anger was the attempt, starting in Scotland, and replicated in England, to replace the traditional examinations by teacher assessment ‘moderated’ by performance as a whole of the school attended. Such an approach effectively penalises all students attending the more disadvantaged schools and was rightly abandoned in Scotland, which switched exclusively to teacher assessment, subsequently followed by England and Wales. In the UK context, beset with educational disadvantage, the experience is a particularly striking example of the damage to individual lives that the government’s response to COVID-​19 can do. Turning to post-​16 education and training issues, the UK’s agency responsible for further education (Linley, 2020) has laid out a set of consequences of COVID-​19 for young people’s vocational education and training. They identify significant impact on apprenticeships because of the disruption in the programme, including loss of scheduled activity and lack of supervision in all the key transactions between adults and young people that effective apprenticeships require. This

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breakdown demanded at least a temporary reworking of the system, resolving deficiencies and extending the time available for completion, some of which may become permanent. Similar issues arise in relation to on-​the-​job training, delivery of which is reduced and, in some cases, stopped altogether. And when it does continue, it is often reduced to monthly supervision. Workers are also told to stay at home impacting on progress towards attainment of the knowledge and skills that the training was intended to impart. Unusually for Britain, which in the past has rejected the idea of ‘youth policy’, addressing these vital youth issues has been given top priority in response to the coronavirus pandemic. In a mid-​term funding boost, the UK government announced on 8 July 2020 an increase of £30 billion. This includes £2 billion devoted to funding 350,000 six-​monthly minimum wage job placements for 16–​18-​year-​olds to ‘kickstart’ the economy across a whole generation that has been hit by the COVID-​ 19 crisis. With unemployment set to rise to above 5 million, there are also bonuses of £2,000 offered to businesses for every apprentice hired. Adopting a complementary approach in Germany, the government focus is on preventing the establishment of a ‘corona cohort’ of school leavers and students by promoting SMEs that offer apprenticeships for up to €3,000 and support to students who lost their summer jobs of up to €500 a month. Overall, the government is providing subsidies of €500 million to business that create and/​or maintain training places in the context of the VET system. These measures are not just a rescue operation but are also focused on securing the supply of a skilled labour force in the tradition of company-​based vocational qualifications. However, because of an absence of applicants, firms are having to advertise training places and have extended the application deadlines.

Family functioning From a life course perspective, the pandemic has affected ‘linked lives’ in an extreme way, forcing family members to adapt to working at home, to accept loss of income and to ensure children’s and young people’s social and emotional well-​being. All such activity had to be managed within initially the context of online schooling with reduced outdoor activities –​a potentially stressful situation for all parties. A key factor in minimising the socio-​emotional effects of the pandemic is the management of information and social media, including ‘fake news’. Sonia Livingstone’s (2020) suggestions for the family approach to this obstacle to mental stability is in line with her earlier arguments about family management of the internet: ‘Tension,

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uncertainty, risk and social isolation are all perfect breeding grounds for misinformation of which there has been a deluge’ (Livingstone, 2020). Though usually not created with the intention of causing harm, some such messaging is designed as a joke or, much worse, to mislead deliberately and spread the product ‘virally’ by social media. WhatsApp messages, ‘text scandals’, often accompanied by a recommendation to look at this contribution from ‘trusted friends and family’, can result in a ‘heady mix of hoaxes and misguided and sometimes dangerous information’. In this case younger household members may actually be the best source of advice, as to whether the messaging is false or genuine, at least initially. Directing young people towards authoritative sources such as the UK’s BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), the National Health Service and other official news agencies will also have a critical part to play. However, the situation for families is not all problematic. The tools of information and communication can be seen as building new forms of solidarity under conditions of lockdown as all contribute to the means of making the situation bearable across the generations, and in its own way productive. Nevertheless, the OECD (2020) concludes that young people with education below tertiary level are especially at risk of falling into poverty following a three-​month loss of income. Moreover, it is likely that the economic impact of the pandemic will be deeper, and recovery will take much longer than in the aftermath of the 2008 recession caused by the global financial crisis. The economy is expected to contract by 8.3 per cent in the EU in 2020, by 6.8 per cent in Germany and as much as 20 per cent or more in the UK, compounded now, ironically, by the economic consequences of Brexit. In such circumstances, young people’s identity may well be affected, and it is not surprising that, for some, social media are becoming the only source of information. Some may find that the blandishments of the teenage gang as an alternative family are becoming irresistible. There are also some who want to have fun and are violating the rules of social distancing, do not wear masks, and join protest marches against the restrictions.

Health and well-​being Young people are all increasingly open to the risk of mental health problems such as depression, as a reaction to social exclusion as social isolation in the period of lockdown and its aftermath extends. Regardless of social class and living circumstances, the well-​being of

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those young people who have left home with low-​paid, insecure jobs or no job is likely to be affected, especially those living in substandard housing, high-​r ise flats and other places lacking basic amenities. Older people out of work and lacking social support can similarly suffer from such stressful effects, as can single-​parent families living in isolation and other precarious groups such as immigrants and young people with disabilities. Though young people below the age of 16 are less at risk of viral infection than older age groups, with the risk increasing by age, it is well established that isolation as part of hospitalisation can have enduring effects on child and adolescent psychological well-​being. In the case of COVID-​19, the experience has compromised the effectiveness of youth protection systems and safeguarding for vulnerable young people at a time of personal trauma. In normal circumstances, supportive adults will be in regular contact with vulnerable young people to monitor their well-​being and report concerns. Such monitoring is likely to be in conflict with other public services, that are adopting measures to contain the pandemic, including reduction in visits and prioritising only the most serious cases for intervention. In particular, the alternative care system will be under immense strain to provide and maintain school placements and upgrade support. Carers experience increased levels of anxiety and increased behavioural problems in the lockdown family. Moreover, when not supported by parents, digital learning in the context of home schooling can lead to dropout from education and training, and the disengagement may increase the overall number of young people who are not in education, employment or training, though the reasons for disengagement and dropout are complex, develop over time and may already have existed before COVID-​19 struck. Such negative effects can serve as a potential multiplier of pre-​existing disadvantage through a number of pathways. These include decline in educational performance and lack of involvement at work, loss of motivation due to breakdown in education and training, loss of ties with supportive adults, lack of positive peer interactions and high family household stress. The UK’s Young Minds (2020) carried out a survey of young people with mental health problems between 20 and 27 May 2020, when UK schools were first shut down. The young people studied were concerned about school and university closures for many reasons, such as potential loss of contact with friends, concerns about how grades would be assessed and impact on career prospects. There were also concerns about home learning for practical reasons, because of stress

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related to the pandemic and about the loss of the structure and timetable that school supplies. Such concerns extended to the lack of informal support, loss of a safe place away from difficult or dangerous home environments, and the loss of social interaction and self-​management. The Federal Youth Council of Germany (BJK, 2020) issued an appeal to policy makers for strengthening young people’s social participation in face of the coronavirus pandemic by improving interconnections with key local figures. This meant first of all, supporting local communities in maintaining youth clubs and lively neighbourhoods, affordable housing, and public transport, again impeded in the early stages of the lockdown. Such social contexts contribute to stabilising local identity and regional mobility, making the case for their continuing financial protection. These activities, however, had to be curtailed in the autumn when the rate of COVID-​19 infections increased again. Youth organisations such as the UK’s Youth Sport Trust (2020) and UK Youth (2020) reported increased loneliness and isolation and lack of safe space, including not being able to access their youth club services; lack of safe places at home to cope with challenging family relationships; lack of trustworthy relationships or someone to turn to; and increased social media or online pressure. In some cases, for young men there was a heightened risk of engaging in gang-​based substance abuse, carrying weapons or engaging in other dangerous practices. And for young women there was an increased risk of sexual exploitation and grooming. These findings also held for Germany and suggest that social connections with friends is often the most helpful method of managing and maintaining well-​being, such as streaming films (together). Exercise outdoors is also important and is likely to become increasingly so, given the limitations on day-​to-​day activity. Least helpful was reading or watching the news. While young people may want information about what is happening in relation to COVID-​19, knowing every detail and following every update about the rate of infections (the R-​number) and virus-​driven deaths made them feel worse and less in control.

Social media and politics As we have seen, another key factor in minimising the socio-​emotional effects of COVID-​19 is the management of information and social media, including ‘fake news’ and how the approach to it is shared. Such sharing gives all family members a stake in getting the right answer –​a transformation of traditional family practice.

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In Germany, there is a public debate about the impact of conspiracy narratives circulating in social media and also expressed in large protest marches, organised by populists, vaccination opponents and right-​ wingers against the government’s restrictions curtailing freedom to congregate. In this heated debate it is essential that parents discuss these issues with young people and direct their attention to the most trustworthy sources of information. The Council of Europe (Brussels, June 2020)  is asking how to prevent the creation of a ‘lockdown generation’ or ‘corona generation’ and suggests a blueprint for recovering from the pandemic with a focus on giving resources and voice to young people. This approach is with the hope of avoiding an increase of social inequality and to strengthen human rights. It is impossible to predict whether government measures against the spreading of COVID-​19 will ‘scar’ the life course of young people, affecting the outcome of their transitions from education to employment, together with their earnings, housing and family formation. Youth prospects will depend on the duration of the lockdown, the timing of flexible steps in reducing restrictions, and –​most of all –​on the time it takes for economic and social recovery. Conspiracy theories, misinformation and speculation about COVID-​ 19 has flooded social media to start rumours about the pandemic and then deny them. Certain types of people who start and spread falsehoods can include jokers, politicians or conspiracy theorists. In the digital society, hundreds of thousands of people can be persuaded to believe that 5G is a Chinese means of linking people to COVID-​ 19. Furthermore, some conspiracy narratives, originating in the US, maintain that the virus is a means of constructing a new world order, originated by Bill Gates! But as noted earlier, not all the experience of COVID-​19 need be counter-​productive. For some members of the younger generation the pandemic may also be a window of opportunity for engaging in public discourse, voluntary service and joint decision making, actively contributing to recovery in the community and refuting conspiracy narratives. This possibility, however, presupposes that local and national government and the EU provide not only moral, but financial resources to ensure that such engagement happens.

Where next? Although there are only preliminary data on the wider effects of COVID-​19 to date, what they tell us is that the pandemic has

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exacerbated already existing social problems in the context of education, family and employment that cannot be solved by one nation alone. After a long and heated debate, on 21 July 2020 the EU agreed to provide the huge sum of €750 billion for a recovery fund. This fund will only be available for the 27 EU member states –​the UK, as it is no longer a member, will not be able to participate. One unexpected consequence is that measures to resist the pandemic have led, for the majority of citizens, to the return of trust in the state, as reflected in the management and prevention of the spread of the virus. Thus, at least initially, a variety of restrictions in all such areas and activities, including health, sports, education, employment and leisure activities, were accepted. The less appealing aspect was state intervention in everyday life, by limiting individual and family autonomy in which compulsory wearing of facemasks was a particular bone of contention. This experience also led to protest, including by young people, regarding the curtailing of freedom to connect in public places. The more recent and unexpected consequence has been the ostracising of individuals on trains and busses for refusing to cooperate, in some cases resulting in violence. However, there are signs that a public spirit has been growing among young people, contributing to the prevention of infecting others –​ primarily the elderly –​by following the guidelines. Although it is difficult to explain why the restrictions are essential in the interest of public health, by highlighting the temporary nature of the limitations the public may come to see that they serve the common good. The active participation of young people in fighting the spreading of the virus can also be seen as an asset to society and to citizenship. One of the most notable feature of lockdown in British terms is the abandoning of the annual party conferences, each located in a major British city, in place of the much wider, more complicated form of political interaction (e.g. via Zoom) available over the internet and the communications systems offered through it. Hence the conservative party (CDU) in Germany postponed the election of its leader until December 2020. A positive feature is that these changes in the political process open up communication possibilities that can extend the territory of lockdowns across wide geographical areas at home and overseas, of which young people will be the first to take advantage. Mobilisation by the worldwide Fridays for Future movement that is to say across a whole country or the international pursuit of a political objective, such as curtailing climate change, for example by Extinction Rebellion or (in the UK) Momentum’s five-​day internet-​based festival, World Transformed. Many of these events are temporarily

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suspended, but with adaptation to internet approaches they will soon be commonplace again. Apart from new methods for conducting politics, the content of political action and debate is similarly likely to shift. Recovering from the devastation of towns and villages, shopping centres and high streets by online shopping, now compounded by COVID-​19 lockdowns, is likely to become the political cause célèbre of the decade to follow. Furthermore, the closure of theatres, museums, cinemas, shops and restaurants continues to severely damage local enterprises, from pubs to fitness clubs, reducing the funding raised from local taxes. This loss will affect the communities’ capacity to provide support for young people through the provision of youth clubs, youth centres, sports and other youth-​directed facilities. Though the WHO issued the message in July 2020 that we must ‘learn to live with the virus’ and attempt to create a ‘new normality’, it will take time to replace the measures for containing COVID-​19. However, the defining issue of this age and every age that follows is how we manage, through a Green Agenda (delineated by the European Commission), to save the planet for the coming generations. Because the fight against the coronavirus has become the dominant public issue of our time, socio-​ecological concerns, as bound up in the climate change movement and highlighted by the Fridays for Future movement, have become less visible.

Conclusion Youth’s circumstances at the COVID-​19 pandemic-​driven present time are complicated by the fact that many of the structural and cultural features of modern living were already changing at high speed, especially in the labour market, as a consequence of digitalisation. Such a transformation can be seen as heralding a generally positive development before the virus struck all over the world. We therefore confront a situation which is likely to continue changing whatever the outcome of the current COVID-​19 pandemic and whatever the progress made in developing vaccines to defeat it. Virologists have warned of the possibility of further outbreaks of the virus in the future, when meeting in public spaces is permitted, and schools and universities are fully open. However, complying with the rules of social distancing and wearing a mask in public will be mandatory for the time being, to prevent further spreading of the virus. Overriding age distinctions, the other catastrophic effect of the coronavirus pandemic will be on the boosting of inequality, especially

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multiplying the problems of disadvantaged young people. Pressure will be felt particularly by those growing up in families beset by deprivation, with effects on health as well as lack of opportunity to complete education or to find and engage effectively with work. For many, their disadvantage extends to a poor educational record and lack of what is now increasingly seen in every middle-​class household as standard equipment –​computer, smartphone and tablet with a variety of apps supplied. For disadvantaged young people the ability to function effectively in the digital society is still a long way off. Ironically, coping with the consequences of COVID-​19 exposes fault lines in the protection of all citizens that should have no place in the digital society, revealing the disproportionate hardship of one family compared to the next. It is particularly unacceptable that through the failure of politicians to understand scientific advice and to consequently misuse statistical modelling information, disadvantaged young people in the UK, apart from losing their right to be examined, were close to being designated as educational failures facing poor employment prospects. In Germany, there has been a close communication between medical experts, public health administration and government which provided reasons for the timing and duration of restrictions. It should be a top priority to level the playing field and ensure that from now on, in dealing with the fallout from any pandemic, equal opportunities of life chances for every young person must be the unbreachable guiding principle. It must also be the case that all young people of whatever origin have the means to make this aspiration a reality.

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Conclusions: Youth policy challenges One should not predict the future, but rather make it possible. (Antoine de Saint-​Exupery, 1900–​44) The facts and issues regarding youth prospects in the digital society that we presented and discussed in this book are embedded in economic, cultural and social upheavals with enormous consequences for young people’s lives. The first two decades of the 21st century were a period characterised by five major societal transformations affecting youth transitions:  (1) the spread of neo-​liberal economics and politics; (2) deregulation of labour markets and employment; (3) the digital revolution; (4) expansion of higher education; and (5) social media and associated lifestyles. These social, economic and cultural changes have been leading to a dissolution of traditional ways of life, including the decoupling of social classes, social disintegration and uncertainty among large segments of the population, combined with rising populism. They are now joined by more of a natural phenomenon than the conventional human adversary: (6) the COVID-​19 pandemic, the consequences of which we discussed in Chapter 8 and return to here.

Changes Fundamental changes in the public sphere are associated with this transformation. News media (newspapers and television) are losing ground to social media with a trend towards the spread of fake news, and of substituting emotions and opinions for knowledge. These changes document the ambivalent effects of digitalisation and globalisation, including worldwide trade, communication and travel versus new nationalism and tensions within societies and generations, brought about by fewer winners and more losers. These transformations have been leading to increasing contradictions. Responsibility and civic participation are expected of citizens, also young people, while bankers, business managers and some politician act irresponsibly –​especially those pursuing a philosophy of neo-​liberalism.

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It is time to see youth not as a problem but as a resource for societies coping with these changes by promoting free education, successful labour market integration, family formation and national and international political participation. Reliable institutions and pathways are necessary contexts for constructing reflexive identities, building social ties and using digital media to find innovative solutions to societal problems. Youth is not a self-​contained phase of life but rather a staging process of the life course which is impossible to clearly distinguish from adolescence and adulthood, except in terms of legal definitions reflecting the age of maturity. Posing the ‘youth question’ is not an issue of terminology but of age-​related life chances that depend on the constitution of society with respect to intergenerational relations, education and the welfare system, family resources and social pathways to adulthood. In this scenario educational institutions are crucial starting points that provide qualifications and skills and can motivate the ambition to select and follow the pathways that lead to a self-​directed life course. As our comparison between the UK and Germany has documented, there are cross-​national variations and trends in social inequality and poverty that are related to labour market regulation, social policies, the state of the economy and the bargaining strength of unions and youth organisations. The social and political arrangements that guide the relationships between age groups and generations (trust and solidarity versus distrust and competition). There is also significant impact on intra-​ generational living circumstances (housing and inheritance) and on the extent of material and moral support. In a word: life chances and destinations follow the uneven distribution of assets across generations. Intragenerational diversity mirrors the social class structure which perpetuates inequality from generation to generation, and also reflects the defining features of the digital society. Successive generations (or more precisely ‘age cohorts’) develop a specific profile derived from their experiences with certain historical circumstances that define their outlook and life chances. Because the changing economy and political decisions at the national and EU levels impact on the allocation of resources and pathways, analysing the extent to which social inequality divides the members of a cohort is the central task of policy directed youth research. Inequalities result from market competition in all spheres of society, providing the basis of the distribution of life chances: achievers are rewarded, the others need assistance  –​or are to blame for their situation. Gaining self-​efficacy demands social support when individual

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vulnerability increases in the sector of precarious or protracted transitions (NEET), or when family support is weak and welfare agencies are controlling instead of promoting decision making when crucial biographical choices with lifetime consequences have to be made. Skill deficits, educational failures and unemployment predict the risk of becoming a poor young adult. As we have shown, poverty does not result from individual failings but from a failure of the political and economic power holders in providing financial resources, education and employment opportunities and transition support. Individual ambition, effort and life planning are not enough if the institutions of society are organised according to the principle of social and life course selectivity. The structure of social inequality in both the UK and Germany is rooted in the political economy of the neo-​liberal market society which distributes the returns of investment unequally, creating an ever-​g rowing gap between the rich, the well-​to-​do and the poor. Instead of a policy integrating the less well-​prepared youth into the wider society, they tend to be labelled as at-​r isk populations that need to receive special care and training instead of improving their starting points. Education of course plays a part in this discrimination through the streaming for different future locations in the labour market, varying from one location and jurisdiction to the next. The UK and Germany differ in their strategies for promoting young, disadvantaged people. In the UK’s transition landscape, characterised by limited VET, deregulated employment standards and variable-​quality post-​secondary school provision, there is a growing low-​income segment with gig-​ type jobs. Germany still maintains its socially stratified three-​level (tripartite) education system, but manages to guide low achievers, at least in principle, to a VET pathway with employment prospects at the end of the educational experience. We have emphasised that transition arrangements are ‘path-​ dependent’, the long-​term effect of the constitution of society that is rooted in the history of specific economic structures and cultural values. Therefore, the socio-​economic profiles of the UK and Germany show that the youth issue is embedded in different policy contexts. For example, there is a contrast between the belief in ‘risk taking, tight money efficiency and economic growth’ as political guidelines, as exemplified by the UK (and the USA) and a policy of ‘youth promotion’ in sustaining solidarity and social cohesion in Germany and other continental societies. Financially driven capitalism, declining industries and a flexible labour market characterise the UK. In contrast, Germany is a ‘social

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market economy’ with social partners and a regulated labour market. Furthermore, as the Economist (14 April 2018) observed, conservative and homogeneous Germany is becoming more open and plural (‘Cool Germany’), more gender-​balanced and ethnically diverse, but also with an increase of social inequality driven by the impact of global economic competition. Thus, transition arrangements mirror the way education and training institutions are related to the labour market, the welfare systems and the state. The balance of public and private education providers and their links with the employment system define the supply of pathways to adulthood and determine the range of active transition policy available from the state. Therefore, a transfer of transition arrangements from one country to the next is problematic because of the specific cultural assumptions and market mechanisms underpinning the different institutionalised structures and accrediting procedures in each of them.

Rising to the challenges In a context of ever-​expanding digitalisation and growing populism, it is most important to use education to maintain and promote young people’s attachment to the principles of a democratic society and the mission of European integration. Britain’s decision to leave the European Union may therefore be regarded as a populist counterforce encouraging other countries to follow suit, or as a wake-​up call to democratise the structures of the European institutions while there is still the opportunity to do so. In many countries, due to political and cultural alienation brought about by neo-​liberal austerity policies over many years, neglected populations experienced high levels of economic hardship and a declining middle class that prompted political disengagement. This disruption of the status quo became evident in the growing popularity of right-​wing parties, now bolstered by Britain’s decision to leave the European Union. As highlighted, the transmission of advantages and the cumulation of disadvantage are fundamental mechanisms in capitalist societies that should and can be interrupted and finally abolished. Such a transformation would, however, demand progressive economic and social policy tailored to life course changes as a responsibility of the state and its welfare regime. Transition systems need to be converted into the basis of new social contracts with European standards that must also take account of the effects of digitalisation on learning and working. Such arrangements would then empower young people by providing families, neighbourhoods, communities and regions with economic

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resources and viable future perspectives. It is urgent to strengthen the institutions that provide pathways for the less well-​prepared young people from school to the labour market. Such action requires guaranteed financial resources, educational infrastructure and high-​ quality teaching and training personnel, experienced in digitalisation. Thus, a sound life course policy must be based on a long-​term view of the positive effects of early individual participation. This resourcing needs to be coupled with state investments in education and training pathways that stabilise young people’s decisions at key turning points in their lives. The persistence and increase of social inequality in Germany and the UK are calling for governments to reduce the social and economic gap. Family circumstances need to be reconciled with young people’s expectations and goals, while meeting the demands of educational attainment and continuing employment. Instead of intervening in failing or risky transitions, preventive measures are the essential first step. Reconciliation has its place but preparing young people to cope with the challenges and disappointments of transition is even better. Safety-​nets are important for vulnerable young people with scarce resources. Youth policy in the digital society must be responsive to the changing landscapes of education and employment in order to reduce the number of failing young people. Although ‘second-​chance’ programmes can be a vital lifeline for those who have dropped out, the top priority must be to ensure that the resources are available to make certain that the first chance can be realised by most members of the younger generation on the path to independent living. Instead of a fast track from school to casual work, investing in staying on, training for a job or regular VET needs to be institutionalised in the UK as it is in Germany. Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds should be regarded as ‘start-​ups’ and be supported by financial resources, including venture capital if needed, at every stage of the journey. In other words, youth policy must aim at preventing instead of mending. This requires approaches to young people such as guiding, advising, mentoring and nudging, directed at the contexts and future horizons of their lives. Most young people’s decisions in transition are focused on short-​ term preferences. Offering mentoring in the preparation for the next step  –​finding a job, an apprenticeship, enrolling in university, or taking a gap year –​would stimulate them to think about options and anticipate possible long-​term results of selecting or refusing a certain pathway. A  ‘choice architecture’ would provide transparency about conditions and consequences. Shifting from a deficit perspective on

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learning and motivation to promoting skills in pathway management that offer a flexible roadmap with assured continuity could help such young people transform their lives.

Digital society Digitalisation brings challenges the predictability of which are difficult to foresee. The proposal that digital competence should become a basic (core) skill alongside literacy and numeracy attracts support because of the complexity of digital operations and the speed with which they are transforming everyday life. The broader picture of digitalisation focuses on its role in the establishment of the digital society. This idea starts from the fact of using electronic devices for everyday functioning at home and in the workplace (‘Internet of Things’). Moving rapidly from there and being led by the younger generation in deciding where to go becomes a matter of interfacing with the relevant technology. The mediator then becomes part of the internet (‘Internet of Everything’). We can therefore expect, over time, continuous transformation of every action undertaken to similarly become digitalised. The complementary activity is the harvesting of the ‘big data’ used by companies to track at any point in time exactly what we are doing and where we are doing it. As we have seen, at the same time, automation and the use of artificial intelligence to manage digital operations in all areas of routinised activity, of whatever complexity, are spreading. This realisation points in the not too distant future, to new types of occupation and employment while much of what preceded them becomes redundant. It is particularly the effects of these products of digitalisation on young people in transition to adulthood , with which they have had to come to terms.

Education As we have emphasised, education is a central pivot of the digital society. This principle applies through the training of IT employees and the delivery of its diverse products. It is a challenging undertaking because of the speed with which digital activity is changing. But apart from the technical rudiments of what is needed, the standards of the core curriculum –​literacy, numeracy and ‘oracy’ –​now accompanied by digital understanding, also need to be taught from an early age. And clearly this is best done by well-​qualified teachers and trainers, selected from those who run the digital system, which is now a major career option.

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The technical side of this development is, however, only part of the teacher-​training requirement. There is also the need to use the education system to prepare young people for adult life where employment opportunities, if not declining, are continually changing. Such a strategy reinforces the case for internet education and media literacy, not as used in commerce just in its technical capacity of how to make digitalised operations work, but as part of socialisation. The approach thus calls for recognition of digitalisation issues in the core school and college curriculum starting at a relatively early age, and certainly from adolescence, by combining technical information with digital media study alongside the traditional subjects. In this sense, digital competence becomes not only a basic skill but, in combination with the other basic, work-​related and generic (interpersonal) skills, fundamental to building capability. In the digital society it will become important to take a pro-​active stance in the competition for work in the gig-​labour market and to meet the qualification demands of any occupational career. The overarching aim must be to improve education on a continuing lifelong basis. Lifelong learning opens new ventures and pathways to a different and more fulfilling adult life. But this prescription implies the unlikely circumstance of funding being available to make the break from traditional employment to continuing job uncertainty. In addition to employers’ obligations to pay to prepare their future workforce for employment, public investment will be needed to promote the education and lifelong learning alternatives by means of some form of ‘citizens’ income’. The latter option has some similarities to the United States Roosevelt government initiative in establishing the highly successful ‘GI Bill’ that gave all returning servicemen from World War II free access to a university or other higher education opportunities and continues to this day.

Smart family Digital education can also be practised in contemporary society by the smart family. Many families have difficulties with handling the internet activities of their children, especially teenagers using social networking sites, typically through their use of ‘smart’ phones. More attention is needed from educators to help parents appreciate the value to the family that internet activity can bring. The benefits include bridging the generation gap by exchanging and sharing the roles of teacher and student, and preparing for the risks, as well as opportunities, in networking and other forms of interpersonal interaction. Schools,

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colleges and adult educators, backed by education policy makers, can play an important part in this preparation by building knowledge and understanding of the internet and through motivating smartphone behaviour in more civilising directions. Such educational intervention extends the networking to mobile phone use in general, which is commonly seen as having a retrogressive effect on family relations and functioning. Again, the primary challenge here, to be met by government funding, is to provide access to digital technology, particularly computers, tablets, printers and essential ‘apps’, free at the point of use, for all family members. Central to this approach is giving attention especially to those whose own resources are too limited to pay for the facilities themselves. The family may go some of the way to solving the problem of lack of connectivity by their offspring when sharing it with other families –​but more significant is the use to which such connectivity is put. Excessive absorption in social media can become an activity that replaces family life as traditionally experienced. Though still of relatively limited duration, there has been growing concern and controversy in international agencies such as UNESCO, as well as by experts in digitalisation networking across the world, around the issue of banning certain digital platforms. The concern arises from the distortion of reality such media can present, of which the ‘fake news’ encountered earlier is just one of many typical examples. The staunch resistance to any such restriction on the freedom to publish from the internet company giants is an indication of how much investment is involved in maximising unrestricted internet use. And in any event few people in a liberal democracy are likely to want to sanction the censorship implied. Rather in line with the advocates of social media education, the internet free of restriction can have positive benefits for young people if experienced in a supportive family environment as part of normal growing up. Rather than restricting this freedom, young people need encouragement and a degree of protection in their activities from which both sides of the family can learn. The more challenging aspect of internet use is ironically less about content than the culture of social cohesion. The lack of face-​to-​f ace contact, sometimes daily over many hours, can have adverse physiological and psychological effects, leading to a coarsening of interactions inside and outside the internet and a socially negative persona that needs to be addressed.

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Political engagement There is a range of political effects triggered by digitalisation. Another socio-​cultural aspect of the functionality of internet use is strongly seen in the new politics, especially in relation to protest meetings and fundraising petitions on issues like climate change. The striking feature of these youth initiatives is the incredible speed and global level at which they can be launched. Citizen and youth councils in the UK and across most European countries, including the government-​funded British Youth council or the Federal Youth Council of Germany, offer numerous opportunities for debate outside and inside the formal youth organisations. Youth councils’ members also advise local and national governments on youth matters. Another expanding feature of digital capability is promoting, motivating and recording such activity. As the COVID-​19 pandemic has demonstrated, all such initiatives can be transformed digitally into virtual meetings when the need arises, often gaining efficiency via such platforms as ‘Zoom’ in doing so. More widely, the national parties and their European representatives of all political complexions have based their visibility and existence largely on digital connections. They offer new forms of deliberative democracy and are particularly attractive to young people because of the digital world they occupy. In the continuing complaints about the EU’s democratic deficit such activity can be effectively mobilised to broaden the mandate democratising the powers of the European institutions. Digital literacy is increasingly demanded in education and work, while digital citizenship permits participation in political decision making on the local and national level. Because the public discourse is influenced by party politics of the right and left, digital populism has been growing in the countries of the EU and in the UK. Thus, youth policy must embrace the intentions and consequences of digital applications. And media messages are needed to counter the bias and negativity of many of these communications to stimulate interest in all legitimate political persuasions. Such widening is a vital part of political education extended to youth transitions. For example, who is accountable for decisions made by artificial intelligence directed at realigning young people’s life courses, for example by screening and selecting job applicants. There is a risk of fundamental ambivalence in digitalised media manifested in declining face-​to-​face interaction and fragmented communities. On the other hand, in times of crisis (for example, the spread of COVID-​19) social media information enables young people to stay connected with the

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older generation by participating in joint initiatives such as supporting the elderly, thereby helping to prevent social isolation.

Life chances Where does thinking about the effects of digital society on young people’s prospects, now compounded by COVID-​19, lead us? Summarising the results of our discussion, we finish by making several suggestions for improving youth prospects in the digital society, taking regard finally of COVID-​19. First, a new social contract entailing a ‘life chances credit system’ needs to be established to prevent social inequality being reproduced from generation to generation, financed by inheritance tax. This strategy is to supplement society’s welfare mix for the promotion of individual decisions on educational and occupational pathways. Furthermore, entitlements to social benefits must be guaranteed, as remedies for structural failings. Implementing the new social contract should be accompanied by intermediaries between education and the labour market that teenagers and young adults can turn to. These include social workers and not-​for-​profit organisations offering advice in person or online about access to resources, alternative pathways and opportunities. According to the concept of capability, options must be made available in order to confirm freedom to choose. Second, governments must guarantee minimum wages and invest in job creation. Neo-​liberal politics in both the UK and Germany have been too much focused on monetary policy and financial institutions. Such an approach neglects wage policy, which could also be effective for young employees. Raising minimum wages and creating jobs in the health, social and educational sectors for young people who are in precarious school-​to-​work transitions would be a contribution to the public good, especially now. But faced with declining labour market prospects, employment options, such as reduced working hours and enhanced educational support with a focus on digital skills backed by some form of citizen’s income, and available at any age, need to be considered as part of the package. In view of the increasingly opaque labour market transactions and multiple public and private providers of education, a reliable online information and mentoring system should be introduced for disadvantaged youth. Another structural change to improve transitions to employment is redistributing jobs by reducing work time to 30 hours or less. This overdue reform would lower the number of precarious jobs and offer employment for young people at all levels. It would also

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help to enable especially young mothers to enter full-​time jobs after breaks in their employment. Third, young adults can move to employment via fast-​track or slow-​track transitions. From a utilitarian perspective, getting on a fast track after leaving school is a rational decision because it promises quick labour market entrance that, however, may close off further opportunities which are related to improving the skills profile through extending social networks during a ‘gap year’. Such a break would support the development of well-​informed career horizon planning and may also help to head off unexpected turning points, like dropping out from a pathway. Many young people opt for such a gap year before entering university, for which work and travel abroad is popular. This phase slows down a possible fast-​track transition into unknown territory and fields of studies and provides time for reflecting on ambitions. Such a break, however, tends to be restricted largely to middle-​and upper-​class youth. Therefore, the less advantaged should also have the chance to take advantage of it, ideally spending some time abroad working in paid socially useful jobs in national and/​or European organisations. The mix would include NGOs, for example, in environmental protection. In Germany, however, young people who have graduated from a low-​ level school and have not succeeded in finding an apprenticeship, tend to take a fast track in which gig employment or vocational preparation is the typical outcome. A comparable transition path to precarity is taken by young people in the UK, many of whom alternate between gig-​type jobs and NEET. Fourth, to promote digital literacy, the properties of the digital society and the mechanisms of the digital economy should be part of the curriculum from school entry onwards. Coverage should be debated nationally and in all European countries, formulated as teaching programmes separately within each country to meet local education expectations and needs. Such an education programme includes opening debate on developing policy that finds the right balance between freedom to exploit the internet for unrestricted communication purposes and regulation to protect young people from internet exploitation and abuse. Media education should focus also on understanding of the legislative and freedom of speech issues involved. Fifth, the internet should be used extensively in political education in promoting awareness and exposing political ideology and policies to scrutiny, evaluating political messages, their credibility and trust (for example, ‘fake’ news), and in mastery of political organisation. The purpose would be to strengthen democracy in all elements while

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inducting young people into the means of full participation, including the uses and abuses of elections and mobilisation of activism of the electorate, and probably in today’s world the most important of all, use of digital and social media. Such an improvement of political participation is the goal of a proposal to reduce the voting age to 16, currently being debated in Germany. Sixth, there is the need for developing youth policy guidelines, especially in view of the self-​separation of the UK from the European Union. Implementing the EU youth strategy in the current 27 member states is urgent, in order to keep the support of the younger generation alive. An encouraging model is the EU Youth Orchestra, consisting of up to 140 members from 28 countries. It was established in London in 1976 and moved to Rome in 2018, reacting to Brexit. The youth orchestra is an example of creating a cosmopolitan ‘Erasmus spirit’ extending among young people across Europe, including the UK, also connected via social media  –​contrasting with nationalist separation tendencies. The promotion of communitarian values in a cosmopolitan framework helps stimulate young people’s competence to become active in engaging with and answering for social, ecological and political grievances. Offering opportunities and defining goals of participation is fundamental for promoting active citizenship in the framework of the youth policy agenda, especially for attracting disengaged young people, and as needed, their parents. Taking part starts with local and regional issues and moves on to the national and European level, usually prompted by social movements that use the internet for mobilisation. In a series of recommendations, the European Commission has been the driver of increasing young people’s participation in local, regional and European affairs that concern their future. Brexit clouds the extent to which such European thinking and initiatives will continue spreading to the UK. But the enthusiasm for them in the UK countries of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland makes the case for England to embrace them as well. However, this possibility may still demand much dedicated and continuing campaigning to ensure it happens. Seventh, governments need to use the lessons learned from the coronavirus pandemic to formulate policy for managing and defeating subsequent manifestations of coronaviruses. Such preparation should extend to protecting the population from other pandemics that may follow in which provision for young people will play a vital part. The analogy of wartime experience has often been cited to describe the experiences of ‘lockdown’ and ‘social distancing’, which in principle, in the absence of a robust vaccine, could extend indefinitely. Depending

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on the progress made in developing such a vaccine to defeat COVID-​19, the shared experience is the restriction on liberty, gradually loosened until no further sign of the virus can be found. Up until then, while COVID-​19 is active there can only be the greatest caution in every vulnerable situation. Situations involving close contact with others, including private meetings, shopping and work, can be particularly challenging. The main difference, of course, is the use of medical rather than military methods to defeat the enemy, but the same issue is confronted –​of large numbers of unexpected and avoidable deaths. The solution needs to be fourfold. First, government must listen to science and check regularly which measures controlling the spread of the virus work and which do not. Second, the local population must be convinced that social distancing and facemasks reduce the risk of infection. This reasoning also needs to be made clear to young people. Third, schools, colleges and universities must be reopened as soon as scientifically justifiable, with appropriate safety regulations that will put at rest the minds of both young people and their parents. Fourth, preparation for defeating the virus depends on large-​scale testing and stocking up now, and continually from now on, with the necessary personal protective equipment and vaccines backed by adequate medical staffing. This commitment is the only basis for ensuring that the strategic disasters of fighting the pandemic the first time will not be repeated. The ultimate goal of these solutions must be to prevent the pandemic resulting in a ‘corona generation’.

Ultimate challenge Finally, we confront the other main challenge of our time  –​and perhaps the most serious of them –​which is a natural environment that can no longer be relied upon to meet our previously held beliefs and assumptions. Young people have been at the forefront of warning society against the threats to everyday living that climate change represents and their efforts merit consistent support. Politicians have also been engaging with the subject through such initiatives as the 2016 Paris Climate Accord, though their ongoing commitment sometimes needs to be demonstrated. The COVID-19 pandemic can be seen as occupying similar if not directly related, places in the transformation spectrum, affecting the younger generation –​and this is where society’s future lies. They both reflect, only partially, recognition of the crisis these phenomena represent.

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Young people may thus provide the crucial impetus for mobilising future generations and resisting the status quo. They may take encouragement from some unexpected places.

Conclusion To bring these suggestions together we believe that an effective policy that intends to promote young people’s potential must start by taking into account the different living conditions and welfare mixes in European countries. Youth policy must be coherent and embrace skill building, participation, citizenship rights, intra-​generational discrepancies in well-​being, and inter-​generational relations. Such development first of all implies specifying the components of citizenship that come in different versions and levels:  regional, national, EU (passport) and global (digital). Developing citizenship identity may also rest on the sense of belonging to a community or social network and by participating in a common cause, like environmental protection, using the internet to facilitate collaboration. We started this enquiry with issues of inequality. We end with the other major theme of the book, that of identity. One of the most striking features of digitalisation and the internet is the transformation of particularly young people into a new kind of citizenship. They see themselves as admonishers and saviours of the planet and the citizens within it, before it is too late to save it from environmental destruction. The internet supplies a world stage for these awakenings, raising the question whether young people’s identities that we see arising from this mobilisation are fundamentally different from those in generations that preceded theirs. It is in the social, moral, public and commercial interest that the direction of travel is consistently safe and positive. It is also essential that capability acquired through education and the digital society is continually directed at improving the quality of life for every citizen. We need unrelenting engagement in the elimination of all forms of discrimination and exclusion and universal protection from such hazards as COVID-​19. Only governments, supported by an educated public, can ensure ultimately that this transformation happens, which is why we hope this text will contribute to better futures in using the Internet for Everyone. This is our final answer to the youth question.

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163

Index A addiction  76, 103–​4 adolescence  13, 31, 103 AfD ((Alternative for Germany)  47, 116, 119 agency  6, 61–​2, 72, 99–​100, 108 Ainley, Pat  93 Albrecht, G.  31 analytic skills  101 Antonucci, L.  73 apprentices  67 apprenticeships  15, 16, 64, 65, 130–​1 ‘Approach to Digital Health’  107 Arnett, Jeffrey  31 Arnett et al  32 artificial intelligence (AI)  5, 35–​6, 123, 144 automation  144

B Baethge, Martin  21 Bandura, Albert  30 banking crisis, 2007/​08  51, 79 Barlow, John Perry  82 Beck, Ulrich  100 ‘Being Young in Europa Today’  56 Bertelsmann Stiftung  49 ‘Better Internet for Kids, Policy Map’  107 big data  81, 144 Bloodworth, James  38 Blum-​Ross, A.  103–​4 Bologna Process  15 Bourdieu, Pierre  25–​6 Brexit  16, 47, 114, 142 Brexit Party  115, 117 Britain  12, 142 see also UK Buchman, Marlis  33 Buckingham, David  106–​7 Bulgaria  50 Bynner, J.  31–​2

C capability  2, 85–​7, 88, 91–​2, 93, 148, 152 Chetty et al  13–​14 ‘Children in a Digital World’  107 choice architecture  143–​4 Christian Democratic Union (CDU)  58 Christian Social Union (CSU)  47

citizen councils  147 citizenship  147, 150, 152 ‘citizens’ income’  145 Clark, S.C.  68 class  19–​20, 21–​2, 23, 24, 25, 26, 91 and identity  33, 35 and precarity  73 The Class (Livingstone and Sefton-​Green)  98–​9 climate change  108, 137, 151 climate protection  116 coal mining  69 cognitive skills  83 computer-​assisted learning  89, 102 computer-​mediated communications (CMCs)  39–​40 computers  87 connectivity  81, 96, 100–​1, 146 conspiracy narratives  135 Contini, D.  71 Corbyn, Jeremy  121 cosmopolitans  119–​20 Côté, James  24, 31–​2 Council of Europe  135 COVID-​19  1–​2, 7–​8, 124, 127–​38, 150–​1 crime  77 crowd work  69 culture  59, 100, 105 curriculum  86, 93, 149 cyber-​bullying  103 cybercrime  82

D DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service)  54 debt  3, 75 deception  40 ‘A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace’ (Barlow)  82 deep learning  122–​3 Denmark  53, 88 deprivation  17, 38–​9, 49, 138 devices, definition  81 digital capitalism  19 digital citizenship  147 digital competence  84, 122, 144, 145 digital divide  90 Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI)  88–​9 digital feudalism  18 digital immigrants  96 digitalisation, definition  5

165

Youth Prospects in the Digital Society digitalised individualism  6 digital learning  133 digital literacy  107, 147, 149 digital natives  87, 96 digital navigation skills  83 digital populism  147 digital skills  90 see also skills digital Taylorism  25 digital technology  83 disadvantaged families  128–​9 disadvantaged young people  138 distance learning  102 distance teaching  89 dropping out  133 dual studies  63, 65–​6 Dumont, H.  82 Dyreborg, J.  71

E earnings  130 East Germany  15, 16 echo chambers  105 Economist  142 education  2–​3, 12, 15–​17, 19–​22, 26–​7, 62–​3, 79–​81, 144–​6 and apprenticeships  130–​1 and class  91 and COVID-​19  133–​5 and the EU  52–​5, 57 fairness of  49 in Germany  23, 68 higher  52–​3, 74–​5 inequalities  11 media  106–​7, 149 and online learning  100–​1 political  118, 122–​4, 149 and populism  119 post-​formal  76 staying on  90–​1 Elder, Glen  4, 108 the elderly  90 elections  115–​17, 119, 124 Ellison et al  39 employability  18–​19 employment  17–​19, 34–​8, 42, 129–​30, 148–​9 the environment  57, 116, 120, 151 Erasmus programme  53–​4 Erikson, Erik  31 ethnic discrimination  20 EU (European Union)  45–​60, 142 COVID-​19 recovery fund  136 and DESI  88–​9 elections  115–​16 and higher education  15 Horizon  115

international youth conferences  115 and media education  107 Youth Orchestra  150 youth strategy  51, 150 euro  45 European Commission  45, 51, 52, 55, 150 European Council  45 European Court  45 European Credit Transfer System (ECTS)  54 ‘European ICT Coalition for Children Online’  107 European identity  41 European Parliament  45, 51 European Qualification Framework  54 European Youth Parliament  56 European Youth Portal  56 exclusion  4–​5, 89–​91 Extinction Rebellion  121, 136

F Facebook  120, 122 ‘The fading American dream’ (Chetty et al)  13–​14 fake news  82, 84, 87, 120, 131–​2, 139, 146 families  95–​109, 131–​2 Farage, Nigel  117 fast-​track transitions  149 Federal Work Agency (Germany)  129 Federal Youth Council of Germany  134 Filandri, M.  71 financial crisis, 2007/​08  51, 79 Finland  88 flexible work  19 formal learning  84 formative assessment  93 France, Alan  93 freedom  68–​9, 91–​2, 146 Fridays for Future (FfF)  7, 113–​14, 120–​2, 136, 137 Friedrich-​Ebert-​Stiftung (FES)  50

G gaming  76–​7 gap year  149 Germany  14–​16, 57, 68, 141–​2 apprenticeships  131 and COVID-​19  138 and DESI  89 dual system  63–​7 economy  132 education  3, 12, 19, 20, 26–​7, 63, 74–​5, 80 elections  115, 116

166

Index and fast-​track transitions  149 and FfF  120–​1 and immigrants  22–​4 and incomes  130 and internet use  111–​12 middle class  11–​12 and minimum wages  18 and NEET  71 and political participation  58, 59, 114, 118–​19 and populism  47 and precarity  73–​4 school leaving age  90 schools  130 and social inequality  21 Social Justice Index  50 and social media  135 and unemployment  51, 67, 129 and voting  56 and wealth  17 Youth Study  111, 114, 118, 119 GI Bill  145 gig economy  5, 36–​7, 38, 42, 51, 123, 149 globalisation  4, 11, 15, 100, 139 Goffman, E.  39 Goldthorpe, John  26 Google  92, 106, 112 Great Coalition  116 Great Recession  48–​9, 51, 52, 129–​30 Greece  48, 49, 51, 53 Green Agenda  137 Greenfield, Patricia  105 Green Party (Germany)  115, 116 Green Party (UK)  117 Groh-​Samberg, O.  27 grooming  104 Gymnasium  15–​16, 20, 23, 66

immigrants  22–​4, 28, 47, 66–​7 income  130 see also wages individualisation  4 individualism  6 industrial capitalism  19 Industrial Revolution  98 inequality  11, 12–​15, 16–​17, 23–​6, 79, 140–​1, 143 and class  21–​2 and COVID-​19  128, 137–​8 and the internet  124 and wages  18–​19 informal learning  84, 87 information society  80 integration, European  59–​60 intellectual capital  12 intergenerational relations  97–​8 international youth conferences  115 internet  6, 13, 96–​7, 98–​9, 100, 104, 105 as a basic public utility  107 and COVID-​19  124 and family management  131–​2 and freedom  146 and identity  152 and politics  118, 149–​50 and regulation  82 role  111–​14 and social networking  101, 102 Internet of Everything  79, 81–​2, 144 Internet of Things (IoT)  81, 144 interpersonal skills  83 intrapersonal skills  83 Istance, D.  82 IT addicts  76–​7, 103–​4 Italy  48, 49, 51, 71

H

jobs  17–​18 see also employment JUSO  58

health  105–​6, 132, 133–​4 Heckman, Robert  85 Henn, M.  115, 119–​20 higher education  15, 52–​3, 74–​5 see also universities Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-​ Wage Britain (Bloodworth)  38 home, leaving  51–​2 honesty  40 Horizon  115 housing  49 human capital  2 Hurrelmann, K.  31

I Ideal Self  30 identity  29–​43, 57, 152

J

K Kahneman, Daniel  34 knowledge, extracting  100 knowledge society  80

L Labour Force Survey  112 labour market  34–​6, 129–​30 Labour Party  58, 121 learning  84, 86–​7, 89, 93, 102, 133, 145 deep  122–​3 Leipzig University  128–​9 Levy, F.  36, 88

167

Youth Prospects in the Digital Society Liberal-​Democrat MPs  117 life chances  148–​51 ‘life chances credit system’  148 life course  4, 5–​6, 61–​2 lifelong learning  42–​3, 54, 86, 93, 145 life scripts  33–​4 linked lives  99, 108 Lipscomb, H.J.  71 Livingstone, Sonya  98–​9, 103–​4 Loader, B.  113 loans  3 lockdown  128–​9, 136 lower classes  19, 20, 26, 35 lower middle class  22 Lucas, Caroline  117

M Macron, Emmanuel  47, 59 masking  39 Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)  89 material deprivation  49 Mechanical Turk  69 media competence  122, 123, 124 media education  106–​7, 149 The Media Education Manifesto (Buckingham)  106–​7, 108–​9 mental health  132, 133–​4 mentoring  143, 148 middle class  11–​12, 19–​20, 22, 26, 35, 73 migrants  22–​4, 28, 47, 66–​7 migration  56–​7 minimum wages  18, 148 mobile phones  6, 104 mobility  11, 13, 21, 54, 76, 134 Momentum  7, 58, 113, 121, 136 Murnane, R.J.  36, 88

Owens, T.J.  30

P Pacelli, L.  71 parents, and technology  96, 97, 99, 102, 103–​4, 106, 108, 145 path dependency  15–​18, 27 phones, mobile  6, 104 Piketty, Thomas  14 political advertising  117–​20 political education  122–​3, 149–​50 political left  7 political participation  6, 55–​9, 113–​22, 124–​5, 136–​7, 147–​8 populism  47, 107–​8, 119, 142, 147 post-​formal education  76 poverty  27, 49, 141 Prassel, Jeremias  38 precariat  37, 38, 91 precarity  70–​3, 149 protests  7, 57 public health effects  105–​6 Pulse of Europe  58 Putnam, Robert  13

R refugees  22–​3, 28, 47, 56–​7 regulation, social media  107–​8 Resolution Foundation  129–​30 Rezo  118 risks  103–​5 Risk Society (Beck)  100 Roberts, K.  68 Robinson, D.F.  30 Robinson, Ken  86 robotics  5, 35–​6 role confusion  31 Romania  50

N

S

nationalism  37, 46, 47, 117 NEET (not in education, employment or training)  19, 51, 70–​1, 133, 149 neo-​nationalism  47 Netherlands  88 networking  81 see also social networking new middle class  12 new politics  147 New Youth Strategy  55 Nielsen, M.L.  71 non-​formal learning  84

safety-​nets  143 Saint-​Exupery, Antoine de  139 Scandinavian countries  49, 50 schools  15–​16, 20, 130, 133–​4 Scottish Nationalist Party  117 screen time conflicts  104 Sefton-​Green, Julian  98–​9 selective self-​presentation  39 self  29–​30 self-​concept  30 self-​efficacy  30, 140–​1 self-​employment  75–​6 Sen, Amartya  85, 91 Sennett, Richard  19 Settersten et al  1 singletons  95 skills  2, 82–​5, 90, 101, 144

O OECD  69, 83, 129, 132 online teaching  89

168

Index Sloam, J.  115, 119–​20 slow-​track transitions  149 smart family  9, 96, 145–​6 see also families smartphones  145, 146 Smith-​Lovin, L.  30 social assistance  73 social capital  101 social class  23, 24, 25, 26, 33, 73 see also class social cohesion  49 social contract  148 social exclusion  49 social inequality  see inequality social isolation  148 social justice  49–​50 Social Justice Index  50 social learning theory  30 social media  39–​40, 102, 117–​20, 124, 139, 146 and COVID-​19  131–​2, 134–​5 and political activities  113 and social isolation  147–​8 social mobility  11, 13, 54 social networking  6–​7, 13, 101–​3, 105 social ties  13 soft skills  83 Spain  48, 49, 51, 67 SPD (Social Democratic Party)  7, 58 Spiegelhalter, David  128 Standing, Guy  37, 70, 73 ‘Structured Dialogue’  55–​6, 60 student loans  3 summative assessment  93 Sweden  56, 88

T teaching  89 see also learning technological transformation  4 tertiary education  52–​3 see also higher education Therborn, Göran  46 Thunberg, Greta  120 TikTok  118 timing  100 toolbox  118, 124 toxic unicorns  105 traditional middle class  11–​12 trolling  103 trust  40, 50 tuition fees  3, 74 Twitter  120

U Uber  38 UK  57, 68, 141 and COVID-​19  138

and DESI  89 economy  132 education  2–​3, 12, 16–​17, 19–​20, 21–​2, 62–​3, 75, 130–​1 elections  115, 116–​17 and Erasmus programme  53, 54 and internet use  112 and NEET  71 and political participation  58, 59, 114, 116, 120 and populism  47 and precarity  149 school leaving age  90–​1 Social Justice Index  50 and unemployment  51, 129–​30 and VET  26 and voting  56 wages  18 wealth  15 UK Independence Party (UKIP)  47 UN, international youth conferences  115 underemployment  19 unemployment  19, 48, 51–​3, 67–​8, 129 UNICEF  107 universities  12, 21–​2, 74 upper class  20, 26, 35, 73 upper middle class  22 US  economic inequality  13–​14 education  12 tuition fees  74

V VET (vocational education and training)  5–​6, 15, 16, 26–​7, 63–​7 Visegrad states  47 Voges, W.  27 voting  56, 58–​9 Vromen, A.  113

W wages  18, 148 Wales  117 Wallace, C.  68 wealth  14–​15, 17 well-​being  132–​3, 134 West Germany  15 WHO (World Health Organization)  123 Willis, Paul  21 Woodman, D.  24 work-​based skills  85 working class  21–​2 work time, reducing  148–​9 World Transformed  136 Wyn, J.  24

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Youth Prospects in the Digital Society

X Xenos, M.A.  113

Y Young Minds  133–​4 youth councils  147 Youth Guarantee  52, 54 Youth Orchestra, EU  150 Youthquake (Sloam and Henn)  120

Youth Rebellion  121 Youth Report  52 Youth Sport Trust  134 youth strategy, EU  51, 150 Youth Study  111, 114, 118, 119

Z ZEIT Campus Magazine  121 zero-​hour contracts  36–​7

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“Exquisitely written, a timely and imperative treatise on the most pressing issues of our times for young people’s journey to adulthood.” Marlis Buchmann, University of Zurich “A thorough and critical analysis of identity problems of young people in the digital age, written by two renowned masters of sociological theory.” Klaus Hurrelmann, Hertie-School of Governance, Berlin “This engaging book is the fruit of decades of scholarly research and fertile friendship between two experts on how young people navigate the transition to adulthood.” Frank Coffield, University College London In an age when the next generation have worse prospects than those of their parents, this book appraises the challenges young people face resulting from the instability of their lives. Based on youth experience of education, employment and political participation in England and Germany, the book examines the impact of digitalisation in the context of rising inequality, accelerating technological transformation, fragile European institutions, growing nationalism and mental and economic stress arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. The insights gained point to young peoples’ agency as central to acquiring the skills and resources needed to shape their future in the digital society. John Bynner is Professor Emeritus of Social Sciences in Education in the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at the University College London Institute of Education. Walter R. Heinz is Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Psychology, and Senior Faculty member of the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences at the University of Bremen.

ISBN 978-1-4473-5148-1

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Youth Prospects in the Digital Society John Bynner and Walter R. Heinz

“In our world of accelerating change, pathways to a promising future have become increasingly more complex and elusive for contemporary generations of youth. This is a must-read for all who wish to enhance their agency in a successful transition.” Glen Elder, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill