Why Do They Sit at Home? the Neet Youth in Poland in Perspective of UE

The paper focuses on NEET youth in Poland in the perspective of EU. The NEET is the acronym of the young who are not in education, employment or training and first emerged in the UK in the late 1980s, reflecting an alternative way of categorizing young people following changes in unemployment benefit policies. Now the interest in the NEET group has grown at EU policy level, and NEET-equivalent definitions have been discussed.

The emerging phenomenon of young NEETs in recent decades has been linked to transformation processes of societies like the global processes of individualization and de-instutionalisation of a life-course and individualization of social risks (i.e. Beck, 1996). The effect of de-instutionalisation seems to be much stronger in Central and East-European EU member states, also in Poland, where the collapse of the strictly regulated old system has considerably increased flexibility and vulnerability of youth transitions if compared to the old EU members. The economic recession starting from the late 2000s has further worsened the process of young people’s transitions towards independent living. 

The main question of the paper is on the scale and dynamic of the Polish NEET population and its heterogeneity in perspective of ways and barriers of transition to independent living of the young. The study are based on quantitative data of the Eurostat and Polish Central Statistical Office for the disclosure of the scale, dynamics and differentiation of socio-economic characteristic and on qualitative data collecting of own research to show the reasons of the young belonging to NEET for their fate and the decision to remain outside the labor market and education. This part of the analysis concentrate of most significant events in a young Pole`s life during the transition from childhood into independent adult life (from education to employment, leaving parental home, family formation, etc.).