NeatSpeaks

Lately, I’ve been doing some work in the area of youth employment. I have been given an opportunity to be involved in a community-based-participatory-research project /community-informed intervention – an initiative that has been ongoing at the centre where I work — which has sprung from a local multi-sectorial partnership in Toronto. The topic of youth employment was the end-point of a long process whereby youth and other members of the community in which the research has taken place have been consulted with in the identification of a problem/solution stream. The idea is that youth and other relevant stakeholders would inform the direction of a programming-and-service intervention, rather than the funders/planners, themselves.

All fantastic and useful results that emerged from this project aside – because I truly believe that the results, and the project itself are an important contribution to the public sector in the community (I will probably post a link to the publicly released report, once it is complete) — I’ve noticed a certain anger that has arisen in me, as a reaction to the direction of youth employment.

What could be so wrong, you ask? Well, nothing… youth employment is an important topic and needs to be addressed. Even I, coming from a relatively privileged upbringing and having the benefits of past work experience which relates almost perfectly to my academic training, understand the chronic struggle of the current climate of employment for young people. However, it is my understanding that the term ‘youth employment’ marries two concepts: 1) youth – being the stage of life before adulthood, otherwise known as young adulthood; and 2) employment – the vehicle to adulthood and stability in future-life. It is this point that I hold contempt to, as I do not believe that for all socio-structural contexts, or even for all individuals, adulthood can be enabled through employment. Instead, I would want to call for a re-framing of what adulthood means for society; what stability means; and, what satisfaction in life stage means.

Let me provide some context for you. Youth employment was chosen as a focal direction for a future community-specific intervention by the planning table because of local youth’s desires to be employed, ‘job-ready’, and stable in future life. From an economic perspective, employment emerges as the only means of avoiding the poverty trap in later life, and for young people in the Canadian society, the struggle to enter into adulthood is almost exclusively defined by a period of seeking and maintaining employment. Such is the ambiguity in defining life-stages – they are created out of economic circumstance and upheaval and do not represent true stages in life but rather stages through which an individual navigates his/her dominant economic environment. Think to the concept of childhood, for instance, which did not exist in the middle ages but became defined by schooling and education at some point in history when the power of the monarchy was decreased and the working class held more political weight. Think to the advent of the adolescence, for example, which was borne out of an economic depression during the industrial era in which jobs for “younger adults” became non-existent. There is a great article about the economic emergence of the life-stage of youth in the New York Times (here). It postulates that the dawn of the youth or young-adult stage in life, along with its corresponding definitions, is a result of our recent (and ongoing) economic uncertainty. The continuum between youth and adults can, therefore, be interpreted in one way, as a result of a society’s economic capacity for employment.

The economic climate of the particular community in which this intervention will take place, is such that there is a high level of poverty and that opportunities for careers are few. Naturally, therefore, youth desire to improve employment outcomes/vehicles. At our last meeting, terms such as “youth-readiness” or “job-preparedness” were thrown around, indicating that young people in the community needed support for the transition into adulthood.

It became apparent, however, that stark barriers for this transition stem from poverty. Other salient issues such as “turf-wars” or the need for “role-models” or “case-management” came up. More and more, I have come to understand this picture through the lens of Maslow. The features of an impoverished neighbourhood are barriers to employment, in at and of themselves. It is perhaps more appropriate to think of neighbourhoods with high concentrations of poverty, crime, or other socioeconomic indicators as a stratum of neighbourhoods which do not lend themselves easily to the cogs of the wider economic environment, as it is one that largely associates a transition into adulthood with employment. That is, within poor neighbourhoods, or for individuals living in poverty, the transition into adulthood may be inclusive of economic stability as well as other salient issues (incl. moving away from gang culture, finding a mentor, etc.) Neighbourhoods, afterall, have micro-environments through which residents come to understand their roles, but also come to interact with.

In the case of this particular community, adulthood could not simply be defined by obtaining or maintaining employment; as well, employment may not be a solution to the survival of adults in the micro-environment. I don’t pretend to know the nuances in the issues faced by this community; but I am certain, from the feedback received during the consultation and planning process of this project, that as in Maslow’s hierarchy, there are elements to adulthood in the community that need to be understood and accepted, prior to or in conjunction to the imposition of employment as a means of transitioning/surviving through young-adulthood.

It is from this point that I would wish for a reframing of what it means to be an adult in society, such that the nuanced elements of adulthood in an economic micro-environment, such as that of a low-income neighbourhood, are accounted for and made acceptable as goals for youth to aspire to. Employment should not be the end-goal as it does not take into account local context. From here, I believe that the general understanding of what it means to be stable in one’s adult life would subsequently be adjusted, as the definition of adulthood would no longer be exclusive to the economic factors of one’s livelihood. It is fascinating to me, what it means to be a young person as more and more, I am coming to find that youth are not an easy bunch to typecast. This being the case, I firmly believe that the roles of youth as defined by the dominant society need to have room for expansion. Our support for youth need to be nuanced because the solutions that we are accustomed to are subject to change by time and by place.

I’m obsessed with the idea of studying youth-inspired social change and I’m itching to read and write about it… Perhaps this will be my project for the year — putting this concept onto paper — to be worked on during weekends and days off. 

(reposting this video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRtc-k6dhgs&feature=player_embedded

I was perusing the shelves at Indigo the other day, having left work early (a computer induced headache) and wanting to distract myself for an hour before heading home. Lucky for me, my quest for a particular title led me head first to stumble into the graphic novels section. I didn’t find what I was looking for but I found this book instead:

Fantastic appropriation of the picture book genre… In short, ‘loving it’…