Enabling Meaningfulness with Young NEETs in the Nordic Region

This chapter focuses on diverse possibilities to engage in mobilizing young adults to meaningful activities within an ever larger and more varied group of marginalized youth in the Nordic countries. A pan Nordic study, commissioned by the Nordic Council of Ministers committee of officials for sustainable rural regional development in 2017–2019, was driven by the need to better understand the situation of these marginalized young adults. This chapter is based on this Nordic project and will present some local and regional processes with serious mismatch problems relating to youth education and validity in the local and regional labour market in the Nordic countries. We ask what characterizes the group of youth and rising number of young adults in the age 18–30 that seems to lose meaningfulness during their education and drop out, and who do not engage in training and have hard time becoming employed. What explanations do other studies on NEETs (not in education, employment, or training) provide? Which initiatives to mobilize young people have worked and in what context in the Nordic countries, so far