Action-Research to assess the dimension of the NEET phenomenon in Tuscany

Title SAMPEI – Sviluppo Approcci Multidimensionali per Progetti di Emersione Inclusiva

Location Tuscany, Italy

Project leader Comune di Bagno a Ripoli

Partners Comuni di Figline e Incisa Valdarno, Impruneta, Reggello, Rignano sull’Arno, Unione Comunale Chianti Fiorentino; Istituto Partitario “Marsilio Ficino”, Istituto Comprensivo di Rignano Incisa, ISIS Giorgio Vasari, Figline e Incisa Valdarno, Istituto Comprensivo di Reggello, Istituto Comprensivo Antonino Caponnetto, ISIS Gobetti-Volta, IC “Primo Levi” di Impruneta, Istituto Comprensivo “Il Principe” di San Casciano VP; CNA Firenze metropolitana, Cia Agricoltori Italiani Toscana Centro, Confesercenti Firenze; CESCOT Firenze, Chiantiform ETS, CFP don Facibeni; Cooperativa sociale Coop. 21, Consorzio Metropoli scs rl, Oxfam Italia Intercultura, La Stadera Cooperativa Sociale Onlus, Associazione Anelli Mancanti Valdarno, Anteas, Associazione Culturale Gruppo della Pieve, Circolo Arci di Rignano sull’Arno, Arci Firenze Aps, Croce Rossa Italiana Comitato di Rignano, Associazione Pubblica Assistenza Croce D’Oro Ponte a Ema, Croce Rossa Italiana, Comitato di Bagno a Ripoli, Passe-Passe asd, Società Ricreativa e culturale di Tavarnuzze ARCI APS

Funding Initiative co-funded by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers – Department for Youth Policy and Universal Civil Service under the ‘Youth Policy Fund – 2020-2021’.

 

Context

The territory of the South-East Florentine area is characterised by a series of economic, social, health and cultural/recreational criticalities. In addition to these, there are inadequate connections to and from the city/main services and local public transport. Services, however, which are essential since commuting both to work and to schools is frequent. With regard to this second category, in fact, the dislocation of personal services and study courses in the larger, urbanised territorial dimension means that most young residents, once they have finished secondary school, have to move to study, work and socialise.

Looking at young residents of school age, an educational fragility emerges, which particularly affects technical and vocational courses, i.e. those chosen by young people mostly coming from families in difficulty: late pupils in technical courses are 21.92% (females 17.07% and males 22.66%), 33.51% (females 30.77% and males 35.10%) for vocational courses, against 8.76% in high schools. On leaving school, however, data on NEETs -Not in Education, Employment or Training, i.e. those young people aged between 15 and 29 who are neither employed nor in education or training, are lost.

In this context, SAMPEI, as a participative community project, intends to set up a Permanent Observatory and Horizontal Governance thanks to which it will be able to conduct a research-action aimed at defining performing strategies and services adequate to intercept, engage and activate on several levels and with more intensity the potential addressees, The research-action will be strengthened by the activation and experimental participation of young NEETs already known and involved in the partners’ activities.

 

General Objective 

The Inclusive Development Unit was involved in the project to examine the characteristics of the NEET phenomenon on the territory of the South-East Florence area and to develop a Data Management System that would allow the Observatory to monitor the conditions of the NEET phenomenon and, in general, of vulnerable youth.

 

Our contribution 

From the point of view of analysis and measurement, the NEET classification poses a number of problems largely due to the heterogeneitỳ of the youth conditions included in it.

The officially adopted definition of NEET also includes the inactive, i.e. those not currently looking for work. Inactives, however, are a heterogeneous category: on the one hand, this category includes the most vulnerable part of young people, i.e. those who are most at risk of social marginalisation if active policies do not intervene with adequate timing and modalities; on the other hand, inactives also include those who are not willing to accept employment because they can count on economic support from their families without any particular problems (these are mainly young people who can stay in their parents’ homes for a long time).

The Inclusive Development Unit will proceed with an in-depth mapping of available data sources and then move towards an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon through interviews, a questionnaire and the identification of a sample of NEETs to be involved in the research.

The information deriving from the research will be re-processed in order to propose an autonomous system of standardisation, collection, systematisation and analysis of data on the NEET phenomenon, which will enable the SAMPEI Observatory to monitor it in the long term.

Read more on the Inclusive Development Unit