“It’s About Community” - Finding Local Solutions to Local Problems: Exploring Responses to the Social Problem of Youth Unemployment

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore the policies and practices associated with the societal ‘problem’ of youth unemployment. This research is primarily a case study analysis of an employment programme established in Otorohanga to address the problem of youth unemployment. The programme in Otorohanga has consistently created a situation where in recent years nobody under the age of 25 is registered with Work and Income New Zealand as unemployed. This outcome has been achieved by ensuring that local youth are either in local training programmes, in employment or in apprenticeships. In this paper we review the international and domestic literature on youth, unemployment, engagement and policies, in conjunction with interviews with a selection of key stakeholders involved in the successes of the Otorohanga programme. We argue that youth are a significant and poorly understood demographic; and that the current policies for dealing with youth unemployment, especially the emphasis on using access to the education system and the impact of neo-liberal ideologies, has had only limited success. Using insights from the interviews, we further argue that policies that draw on local, community driven solutions grounded in labour market realities, in contrast to the current education system driven policy direction, have the potential to be more successful in dealing with the problem of youth unemployment.