IV ISA Forum of Sociology (February 23-28, 2021)

445

Youth Precarity and Transitions

Abstract Submissions Closed

RC34 Sociology of Youth (host committee)

Language: Spanish, French and English

Session Type: Oral

The World Youth Report (United Nation, 2018) estimates that informal work accounts for 69 per cent of employment in so called developing countries, all of whom are in the Global South. In the Global South, roughly 60 per cent of young people are either unemployed, not studying, or involved in irregular employment (International Labour Organisation, 2013). Furthermore, the gender divide in youth unemployment exists only in Global South regions (e.g. Latin America and the Caribbean, and North Africa and the Middle East). Economies in the Global South also demonstrate stark contrasts between receding traditional economic sectors, such as agriculture and modern economic sectors, such as ICT (International Labour Organisation, 2013). Erratic opportunities to obtain work and leaving education earlier than Northern youth are two of the most important employment related differences between youth in the global North and South (International Labour Organisation, 2013). Youth in developing countries are more likely than their Northern counterparts to find informal, casual, irregular employment and they are less likely to try to find work through official channels. This session interrogates, these and other dilemmas of youth precarity and their transitions.