‘Youth and Europe’ extends the notion of identity further, this time in the context of the development of the European Union (EU). The EU mission was to establish, especially among young people, a European identity in all the EU states. The distribution of resources and the rates of youth unemployment in the UK and Germany follows, considered from the perspective of social justice and the consequences of ‘Brexit’. The contribution of EU youth policies to young people’s participation and active citizenship as well as to respecting and integrating cultural diversity is also highlighted. The economic and cultural divisions, leading to sceptical attitudes toward the European Union are also discussed. The Erasmus programme and the wider benefits of the EU youth agenda aimed at reducing unemployment and poverty are presented as highly valued examples of European youth collaboration.

The subject matter here turns directly to the digital society and its effect on family life and family members of different ages and intergenerational relations, based on the idea of 6 Smart families. Such a family comprises active users of the internet and social media intergenerationally, leading on to the issue of ‘opportunities’ versus ‘risks’ in social networking and parents’ approach to it. Opportunities include the opening up of unlimited knowledge and data to family users individually and jointly. Set against this attraction is the world of fake news and the interpersonal damage that the uncontrolled internet through social networking can do. The discussion finishes with the pros and cons of media education and control. The unresolved and most challenging feature of family digitalisation, as the CONVID-19 virus pandemic revealed, is the lack of access to educational and technical resources, largely through poverty of a substantial minority of the youth population.

Focuses on the meaning and effects of social inequality from a structural perspective, i.e. how life chances are based on wealth and income in populations distributed demographically according to such features as education, age, ethnicity, locality and nationality. Social class based patterns and dimensions of stratification that define young people’s life chances in the US and Europe characterise neo-liberal digital societies in which inequality is rising, threatening social cohesion. The book shows how Germany and England are marked by such ‘path-dependent’ inequalities that structure privileged and precarious youth transitions. In addition, inequality is impacted by such factors as globalisation, and migration showing how national economic and social policies respond. Social mechanisms structuring unequal youth transitions are also outlined.

Though data about the effects of the COVID-19 virus on youth are still relatively scarce this chapter attempts to illuminate the resulting disruptions of young people’s lives Pre-existing social problems become more visible in young people, impacting on the families’ capacity to respond to the effect of the virus on their living circumstances and mental health. Coping with the lockdown measures created tensions in families who have to adapt to school closures, working at home-office, short-term employment and the threat of unemployment. In such situations young adults’ life plans become increasingly uncertain. The longer such a situation lasts the greater is the need for policy intervention in order to prevent unrecoverable transition breakdowns. The surge in distress and mental illness signal the possibilities of long term life course damage.

Youth Prospects in the Digital Society In an age when the next generation have worse prospects than their parents, this book appraises the challenges that young people face resulting from the instability and uncertainty of their lives. Based on young people’s experience of education, training, employment, family life and political participation in England and Germany, the book examines the impact of digitalisation on identity in the context of rising inequality. The focus is on the effects of technological transformation, fragile European Union institutions, growing nationalism and mental and economic stress arising from the Covid-19 pandemic on youth transitions and the ever-present shadow of climate change. Such an uncertain context presents systemic challenge for the forms and effectiveness of youth policy in the different national contexts as addressed in each of the chapters that follows. Youth policy is shaped by such key issues as the future of vocational education and training in the digital society, job creation, family, political engagement and community life, the impact of social media and universal connectivity. The book argues that government should be under an obligation to ensure that every young person has access to the technical, economic, and educational resources needed to shape their personal transition to adulthood and acquire the capability needed to participate fully in the digital society.

Youth prospects are related to the possibility of participating in the political process, including political activism, mobilisation, and the internet. The focus is on political education and engagement in use of the internet, exemplified by the impressive, digitalised campaigns launched internationally on such issues as climate change and saving the planet. Young people perceive the political process as mainly online. Political socialisation takes place via social media where the interest in national and European issue is rather limited. Media competence must be developed early and organised as a ‘toolbox’ for dealing with the character of communications. New youth movements like “Fridays for Future”, however, have mobilised youth to participate in the debate about climate change and young people’s voting preferences in national and EU elections and are also addressed.

Policy issues arising from digitalisation in neo-liberal economies are outlined in this final section and are directed at youth policy challenges, based on the findings of the preceding chapters. The themes of inequality, identity, the digital economy, lockdown and the pandemic are centrally addressed, together with such key topics as the future of vocational education and training in the digital society, job creation, family and community life and universal connectivity. The evidence makes the point that government should be under an obligation to ensure that every young person has access to the material, social, technical and educational resources needed to shape match their goals and to acquire the capability to participate fully in the digital society. Young people’s prospects must be promoted by policy innovations that address structural disadvantages and defeat the COVID-19 pandemic.

This chapter extends the topic of learning more broadly than in previous chapters, focusing initially on the implications of digitalisation for both the content and delivery of education Such functions extend in the digital society to the specific knowledge and skills needed to operate effectively within every part of it, i.e. mastery of the ‘Internet of Everything’. Because of the speed of technological transformation attention is drawn to the challenges digitalisation presents to management of education and the taught curriculum. The chapter also considers the distinctive contributions informal and formal education make to generic skills and lifelong learning, the central aim of which is building in a changing world, capabilities that match economic and life course needs. Amartya Sen’s unifying ideas about freedom to achieve also have a central role.

The chapter examines youth identity from a number of perspectives starting with psychological and sociological conceptualisations of self and identity. From there the discussion moves to the controversy over stages of identity development, identity as a biographical resource and the complexities for occupational identity of digital employment. These observations open up to the more recent issues of identity construction by social networking among young people through which a variety of identities may be expressed. Key themes include self-realisation and its counterpoints in relation to different forms of communication and self-presentation and broader statuses such as digital generational national and European identity. The chapter explores challenges arising from these developments to which the effects of the COVID-19 (corona) virus are an added factor.

The focus here is on the drivers of transitions and the routes that young people have to navigate in what is now a labour market ever-more associated with risk and precarity. Transitions are status passages of the life course that young people have to navigate. They are related to social pathways that differ in structure and number in England and Germany and reflect their management of personal relationships, education, and employment. The transition from education to work is considered from the perspective of institutional arrangements and discussed in terms of the effects of digitalisation in restructuring occupations on the pathways of vocational training and academic education. A core theme is how social class and differences in the welfare mix for young people are key influences on their access to occupational opportunities and the process and outcomes of such transitions.

In this chapter we review the evidence from a three-country study assessing the impact of the 2008 Great Recession on young people making the step into independent adulthood, comparing experiences in the UK, in Germany, and the USA. Drawing on evidence from large scale, longitudinal studies the experiences of young people coming of age in different cultural contexts are described. The findings suggest that the Great Recession was a significant, but not principal influence on young people’s changing life course post-2008. Better to characterize it as a major economic shock that intensified the impact of pre-existing economic and social processes on young people’s lives.

This paper reviews evidence on young people in Europe and the US making the transition from school-to-work before and after the 2008 Great Recession. Taking a macro-level perspective, similarities and differences in education and employment experiences across different European countries are described, considering the role of different institutional support systems in ‘scaffolding’ young people's transitions to independence. It is argued that the 2008 financial crisis brought with it reduced employment opportunities for young people and accelerated pre-existing trends towards prolonged education participation and precarious employment. There are, however, considerable variations across different countries, highlighting the role of social institutions in supporting young people during the school-to-work transition. Transition systems that created bridges between education and employment are associated with lower national levels of youth unemployment, while young people coming of age in less-protective transition regimes suffered highest levels of youth unemployment, high levels of temporary employment and not being in education, employment or training (NEET).

The defining feature of the globalising pressures is one of accelerating technological change. With the advent of computer-based information technology, the nature of employment had been rapidly transformed. The standard transition from school to work, which up the end of the 1960s two thirds of young people made at the age of 16, was replaced ten years later by one in which one third were leaving school at the minimum age. In 1994, another development was announced, the modern apprenticeship, which re-established the traditional means of training young people for jobs, but through a much shortened two year period of work- based training combined with education. In 1992, a sample survey of 1,650 cohort members was undertaken by social statistics research unit, to investigate the forces and circumstances which influence young people in their transition from full-time education to employment. The cohort members completed questionnaires, kept two four-day diaries, and undertook educational assessments.

What have we learned about the changing nature of youth transitions and the effect of the Great Recession on them? In this fi nal chapter we draw conclusions and seek further insights from the evidence presented. First we give a brief overview, taking the discussion back to the initial questions about the recession effects to which the preceding chapters were directed. Second, we discuss the evidence in the light of key themes of contemporary youth research and draw out their intersection with life course theory . We then consider the theoretical and policy insights to be gained from the evidence reported. Our discussion focuses on young people in the USA, the UK, and Germany, but also takes into account developments across a range of industrialized countries.