Youth Unemployment and Devolution

Youth unemployment and work insecurity have been prevailing issues across Western Europe since the 2008 Financial Crisis. These inequalities have intensified post-Brexit and COVID-19, with young people consistently overrepresented in the gig economy, working poverty and all forms of work insecurity.

Against a backdrop of increasingly mixed economies of welfare in the UK’s Liberal Welfare regime and work first approach, this book explores civil society responses to youth unemployment in England, Scotland and Wales. Using original, empirical research to challenge the privileging of methodological nationalism in welfare regime studies, it analyses the scale and nature of policy and civil society responses to youth unemployment between the three nations of the UK from the perspectives of policy makers, strategic thinkers and case workers delivering to young people on the ground.