The phenomenon of the unease of our young people had given rise – already before the time of the financial and economic crisis of our days – to various contributions from psychologists, sociologists, economists and scholars in general, engaged in defining the ‘sense of precariousness’ that accompanies the generation of the grandchildren of the baby boomers.
Apart from the various socio-demographic classifications – tending to distinguish the characteristics of the generations (distinguishing the so-called generations ‘X’, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ from the baby boomers and so on) – certain elements have been clearly brought into focus as characterizing the state of this unease. Among these; the disintegration of the family as a nucleus able to transmit and inculcate values, principally through example; the occurrence of this sense of insecurity typical of the age group between 18 and 25, just in the period of life when the start of a career could, instead, contribute to stabilizing the individual towards the realization of a plan for life, and the culmination in pathological forms such as states of anxiety, panic attacks and other disorders which, according to certain epidemiological studies, now affect a third of the young people in the mentioned age group.
Bearing in mind only these few defining elements, there is not an educator who does not understand the significance – the cruciality – of the role played by the University in ensuring the transition towards the world of employment and the consequent capacity to see that such transition is successful, to remove the fueling of youth problems and contribute to the orderly progression and organic development of society.
However, the extremely complex variables which come into play in determining the preconditions of the unease of these young people do not end here.
The other side of the equation, in fact, is occupied by the job market, by the levels of efficiency that it manages to express in ensuring the junction between supply and demand of labour, by the levels of stability that it can – by its own regulations – ensure to employment, naturally, within an overall economic context that represents the heavy framework in which everything, or almost everything is conditioned.
And now we come to the ailments, so to speak, of our times, and to the consequences which the current stage of the economic-financial crisis has on the entire system.
A crisis which grips the ‘old world’ in particular, but the perfectly globalized dimension of our era has made it have repercussions everywhere.
Information from the ISFOL source regarding our Country, reported from authoritative press (1) shows, for example, that the rate of conversion of atypical (temporary) work relations into ‘stable’ work relations (i.e. permanent work) was about 46% in the pre-crisis two-year period (2006-2008) and decreased to 37% in the following two years. Which, combined with the circumstance that 25% of the young people have temporary work, compared to an overall percentage of ‘temporary work’ attesting – on the contrary, to 12.4% - makes the phenomenon of an unemployed youth quite understandable, An unemployment percentage which, in Italy – depending on the geographical zone and the sex of the individual – could be several multiples higher than the overall unemployment rate.
Therefore, pending the desired redesign of the entire system, which by now cannot be postponed, we observe that the forms of temporary work, originally introduced also with the aim of increasing the opportunities to facilitate access to work for the young, were, in fact, already in pre-crisis times, proved to be rather more an instrument to compensate the rigidity (especially in laying off situations, from the companies’ point of view) of the job market. With the crisis, the temporary forms of work have become a factor which emphasize the loss of opportunity for long-term and stable work for the young and, from this viewpoint, accentuate the factors that contribute to their feelings of insecurity.
There is no doubt that if the economic model of the National economic and productive system favoured the inclusion of the young in the work market, allowing them access to satisfactions in economic and welfare terms commensurate with training investment made, then they could find their life prospective, seeking to make improvements in their own conditions and to that of the community to which they belong. But as is pointed out by numerous and authoritative doctrine, this is not the case, insofar as the generation of the under 30 Italians must be recognized as characterized by the so-called flexibility, a phenomenon which, because it affects job opportunities, finishes by conditioning the entire existence of this social group.
In Italy, the incoming flexibility to the job market almost always finishes up by being simply precarious work. In essence, the precarious work consists in an unprotected and unclear form of the flexibility. This results in a continued state of uncertainty which generates serious psychological discomfort, as well as economic hardship, imposing a high price on the new generations and discouraging the realization of long-term projects.
Therefore, it is not to be wondered at that the youngest of the generations (and these are all those born after 1980), who face their entrance into the work market, know that they have to come to terms with this problem. This is what emerged from the replies to questions of the Recent Graduate Survey, research conducted by CEFOP Communication (2) and which, ever year, since 2002, has drawn up a picture of the perceptions and expectations from a representative sample of the new graduates around Italy.
The basic idea is that it is difficult to obtain stable employment in our Country and in this, the University, the sample maintains, is not a good bridge of connection. On the one side, because it does not prepare students to face the reality of a professional role and to expect to take additional training once they have entered a company; on the other, because the university structures responsible for post-graduation orientation are inefficient and completely inadequate.
The University remains, therefore, at the center of the problems that make it difficult for these young people to construct a future which matches their expectations. Much more than other data designed to measure the so-called mismatching between supply and demand of employment (3) , a reality is highlighted which is very near being paradoxical. If one reconstructs (as CEFOP does) grids of comparability between the principal indicators used by international bodies and one reads, in light of such grids, the employment placement information of the graduates in the Italian job market, one finds, for example, that “… in the Italian case, there are 8.9 million jobs for which it is necessary to have a degree or postgraduate qualification, in relation to 3.9 million graduates actually employed”. And again, that “the shortage of graduates and post graduates (…). It says, therefore, that “the skilled jobs are, in part, covered by workers without the appropriate tertiary title, that is, by graduates or even by workers with middle school or elementary certificates, equal to 5.6 million in Italy. But as a further aggravation to the problem, it should be borne in mind that (…) in Italy, 630 thousand graduates and post graduates have to take jobs for which no degree is required”.
A nice conundrum, therefore, which, one way or another, results in a heavy loss of competitiveness for the entire National economic-productive system, removes the prospects of recovery of stability in the future of various generations of workers (and citizens), and makes quite evident the radical choices that must be taken in order to correct the direction in which we are moving. To meet the demands of a fundamental part of our society, it is necessary that the policy choices relative to the job market – and expanding the meaning of the policies in the broadest sense of the term – reunite the four cornerstones for the construction of a society and a modern and just Country: education and training, citizenship and labour policies.
The training that accompanies the individual must be in harmony with his expectations. Secondly, it is necessary to start planning the existence of the Country according to the cycle of life, that which the administrators decide today must have as a timeframe the Country that we leave to our children; for years, this timeframe has been lacking because the sense of ethics that should guide the administration of public affairs has been lost; lastly, for a socially inclusive society it is necessary to start afresh from a more inclusive and complete labour market.