Shunning work and studies
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Many people in the U.K. and Japan are choosing not to work or study. A look at the `neet' phenomenon.
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For every student in college, how many are out of the system? — Photo: Mohammed Yousuf
FOR MOST people, the suggestion that a sizeable number of British teenagers has a "neet'' problem will prompt images of strong hair lotions and fine-tooth combs.
A Japanese team of researchers that came over to Sheffield in northern England recently knows differently, because their nation has neets too. The number of young Japanese not in education, employment or training — the neets — is now an estimated 600,000.
Whether both countries really do have the same problem is a matter of debate among academics. The Japanese delegation had, none the less, come halfway around the world on a damp October day to see how the UK deals with its own. In particular, it had heard good things about the approach taken by the Connexions service.Connexions has taken flak for devoting, a disproportionately large part of staff time and resources on neets at the expense of providing a more straightforward careers guidance service to the vast majority of young people.
Building a relationship
John Papworth, chief executive of Connexions Humber, explained to the Japanese how Connexions helps young people who are feeling isolated or in need of guidance and support. "Rather than passing them round from pillar to post, Connexions provides a dedicated personal adviser, or PA, with whom young people can build a relationship,'' he said. "It is a holistic service — PAs don't just look at the issue that brings the young person to Connexions but at their whole situation.''
It was this all-round approach that interested the Japanese research team in Connexions. Dr Michiko Miyamoto, a professor of family sociology at Chiba University near Tokyo, says, "There has never been a support service of this kind in Japan. The economic situation was so good that there was no real need for career advice or a training service.''
Her description of the Japanese problem would not fit the British situation. "Until 1997 or 1998 there were no neets, but in the last few years many young people have become too wealthy to have to work - there is no need, no urgency. It is a rich country's problem.''
Freeters on the rise
The neet phenomenon may be fundamentally different in both countries, but what about a related and slightly longer-standing problem among young Japanese, the "freeters''? (The word was concocted by combining the English word "free'' with the German word for worker, "arbeiter'').
This term was coined in the late 1980s, during Japan's bubble economy. It referred to young people who deliberately chose not to engage in regular work, despite the large number of jobs available at that time.
It came to include people aged between 15 and 34 who do not make use of their qualifications to embark on careers, but remain only casually involved with the labour market in a series of temporary jobs, usually in the sales and service sector. Freeters often intend to have a steady job one day.
According to government statistics, there are more than four million freeters. They are not necessarily from deprived backgrounds, and increasing numbers are high-school and university graduates.
The Japanese Institute for Education Policy Research identifies three main groups of freeters: "Those who desire freedom and ease — the tarrying type; those who attach importance to doing what they want to do — the dream-chasing type; and those who cannot find their desired regular employment — the no-choice type''.
Somewhere in there are the "mugyousha'', the estimated 280,000 graduates not involved in work or further study, some of whom leave regular employment for insecure destinations within two or three years of graduating. And there is an increasing trend for young people to live at home with their parents, a group sometimes described by the harsh term "parasite freeter''.
Does the UK have freeters, asks Mick Fletcher, research manager at the country's Learning and Skills Development Agency. "There are huge differences between British society and Japan, yet the analysis has disturbing resonances. There is a wealth of anecdotal evidence about young people delaying the start of a career, about ever-expanding gap years between school and university; and harder evidence about increasing numbers of graduates returning home to live with parents.''
The increasing casualisation of jobs in large parts of the service sector, and anecdotal evidence of living for today among young people in employment, suggest to Fletcher that it might be worth some research to find out whether we have freeters. The initial response from a sprinkling of academics working in the field of young adults and the labour market is that we already have the evidence to show the UK does not have freeters.
"The Japanese construction on all of this is very much to do with the young person's volition,'' says Gill Jones, emeritus professor of sociology at Keele University in northern England, who recently completed research on the relationship between young adults and their parents. "They put very negative labels on neets - whereas we are much more likely to see it as a question of constraint: they are living at home because they have to and because jobs are not well paid. This is a problem of the youth labour market.''
Terri Apter, senior tutor at Newnham College at Cambridge university, who specialises in the development of adolescents and young adults within the family and society, agrees, "A degree doesn't give young people the head start that it gave young people in previous generations.'' Many more people are getting degrees, while the number of traditional graduate jobs has drastically dropped.
A perusal of any of the numerous freeter websites throws up a variety of reasons given by young Japanese for pursuing this course, among them a conscious decision not to enter what they see as the hidebound, old-fashioned Japanese corporate world.
In Britain, the evidence suggests that young adults returning home after university are doing so because they cannot afford housing or get a job that allows them to lead independent lives, according to Andy Davidson, communications manager at the UK's Institute of Employment Studies.
Student debt
In this regard, student debt in the UK exercises a positive force. "Students coming out of university have a high average debt, and by and large they want to get rid of it,'' he says.
Recent research shows that young British graduates still want jobs that provide a progression and are aware that the traditional graduate jobs are disappearing, he says. They are taking jobs that once would not have required degrees, using them to get into better positions for more satisfying work.
"They may still be looking to make best use of their graduate skills in professional jobs that are more demanding,'' he says. "They may just take two or three hops to find their niche.''
Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
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