Psycho-social aspects of youth unemployment: an interpretative theoretical model

By utilizing representative samples of short-term (n = 33), long term (n = 14) unemployed adolescents and YTS trainees (n = 49) in North-East Scotland, the present study attempted to identify psycho-social variables involved in the individual adolescent's ability to cope with unemployment. The research was built around a series of semi-structured interviews with all subjects. Results suggested a variety of apparent contradictions--family support vs. parental pressure; informal community-based education as helpful vs. school education as irrelevant; high aspirations as reinforcing or frustrating; peer groups as supportive or socially constraining; time structure as welcome or monotonous and restrictive; self-esteem being sapped or maintained aggressively and defensively high. From the data a theoretical model is offered which attempts to resolve the paradoxes by interpreting the experience of unemployment for young people in terms of positive and negative "trade-offs".