Generazione Neet: questione complessa o etichetta vuota?

NEET – Not in Education, Employment or Training – designates young people between 15 and 29 years old not engaged in any work activities, according to ILO standards, or not involved in formal and non-formal education. The concern about “youth emergency” is showed by many documents of the European Community and within the Europe 2020 Strategy. The Italian situation has always showed higher percentages than the European average; in particular, in 2016 the EU-28 average is 14.2%, while in Italy the Neet are more than two million, which is the 24.3% of the reporting population. Previous studies suggested the implications of this issue with the condition of social inclusion/exclusion and many other social constructs, including: identity and agency, transition to adulthood and project skills, participation, trust and social relationships, the role of work and education/training. The general aim is to look into the Neet issue, through a psycho-social reading that can go beyond the typing surveys and can help to frame the issue in its becoming. The theoretical framework is the Social Representations Theory (Moscovici 1961/1976). More precisely, the emphasis is on the suggestions developed by Doise (1992), Marková (2003) and Camargo and Wachelke (2010). From a methodological point of view, the Grounded Theory approach was explored (Glaser e Strauss, 1967; Charmaz, 2006) and the research is composed by three integrated studies, each of which aims to deepen the object of study with different methods and tools (Flick, 2007; 2014). Specifically, the press was analysed by involving five Italian newspapers; a questionnaire was implemented and addressed to different groups of participants, according to their involvement with the Neet situation; the last study was developed through episodic semi-structured interviews with Neet. The results indicate an articulated social representation through the variables considered. In general, the issue consists of many references to work and aspects related to negative emotionality, partly balanced by some elements that refer to the possibility of having time for themselves and the opportunity to get involved. The long life learning concept is more less present