I NEET, l’Europa e il caso italiano

The aim of this paper is twofold: in the first part, the authors outline the position of the European Institution towards the neet issue, and discuss limits and advantages in the use of the NEET concept and meas-urements in empirical research. The main argument is that the oversemplification of the conceptual framework that sustain the con-struction of the NEET indicators, makes it difficult to grasp the social changes that characterize the youths in Europe. In the second part of the paper, the authors concentrate on the partial implementation of the “Youth Guarantee” in Italy and try to show how – differently from the situation of many european countries - this failure is mainly due to structural obstacles that impedes an effective young people’s transition to active participation in social and economic life