Japan's emerging youth policy : getting young adults back to work
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Japan's emerging youth policy : getting young adults back to work
(The Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese studies series)
Routledge, 2013
- : hbk
Available at 43 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [213]-223) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
From the 1960s onwards, Japan's rapid economic growth coincided with remarkably smooth transitions from school to work and with internationally low levels of youth unemployment. However, this changed dramatically in the 1990s, and by the 2000s, youth employment came to be recognized as a serious concern requiring an immediate response. What shape did this response take?
Japan's Emerging Youth Policy is the first book to investigate in detail how the state, experts, the media as well as youth workers have reacted to the troubling rise of youth joblessness in early 21st century Japan. The answer that emerges is as complex as it is fascinating, but comprises two essential elements. First, instead of institutional 'carrots and sticks' as seen in Europe, actors belonging to mainstream Japan have deployed controversial labels such as NEET ('Not in Education, Employment or Training') to steer inactive youth into low-wage jobs. A second approach has been crafted by entrepreneurial youth support leaders that builds on what the author refers to as 'communities of recognition'. As illustrated in this book using evidence from real sites of youth support, one such methodology consists of 'exploring the user' (i.e. the support-receiver) whereby complex disadvantages, family relationships and local employment contexts are skilfully negotiated. It is this second dimension in Japan's response to youth exclusion that suggests sustainable, internationally attractive solutions to the employment dilemmas that virtually all post-industrial nations currently face but which none have yet seriously addressed.
Based on extensive fieldwork that draws on both sociological and policy science approaches, this book will be welcomed by students, scholars and practitioners in the fields of Japanese and East Asian studies, comparative social policy, youth sociology, the sociology of social problems and social work.
Table of Contents
1. Getting Young Adults Back to Work: A Post-Industrial Dilemma in Japan 2. The Emergence of Youth Independence Support Policy 3. NEET: Creating a Target for Activation 4. Crafting Policy: Sympathetic Bureaucrats in a Hostile Climate 5. The Youth Independence Camp: Communities of Recognition? 6. The Youth Support Station: Exploring the User 7. Beyond Symbolic Activation: Scaling Up the Alternatives
by "Nielsen BookData"