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This study examines employment dynamics of youth in the central highlands of Guatemala. It is during late adolescence and early young adulthood that rural youth explore and settle into occupational structures that often define their economic lives and the region’s economic outlook. However, the occupational orientations of this group are poorly documented.

The study used a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. A three wave longitudinal design with six-month intervals was implemented. Households were identified using random sampling based on household maps. Two individuals per household were interviewed, a female adult and a younger woman/man between 15 and 25 years old in 451 households. In-depth interviews also were conducted with 25 individuals.

Youth occupational choices were associated not only with their health, income, and standing in their household, but also their self-image, sense of independence, and control. Nonfarm jobs were found to be most attractive to youth, who identify them as more “modern” and urban jobs. The study documents shifts from farm to nonfarm jobs, gender dynamics, the impact education has on jobs for youth, and health correlates of employment and unemployment.

Most characterizations of employment patterns in rural areas of Guatemala focus on the “head of household,” while overlooking the diverse job activities of other members of the household. The study not only addresses a population that is often understudied but also provides a longitudinal perspective to understand job switching and youth ideas of a “good” and “better” job.

Football games, youth-led creative projects, spaces to ‘drop in’ and ‘hang out’, mentoring, fun trips are some things that youth work and community organisations do with young people. The informality, flexibility and responsiveness of youth work make it an accessible and important space for young people who are disenfranchised from schooling and even from informal educational services. Furthermore, geography is a constitutive element of youth work, which engages with young people in their everyday neighbourhood spaces, movements and communities, as well as facilitating their mobility beyond the neighbourhood. In this chapter, we reflect on our experiences in the United Kingdom and Slovakia to explore some of the methodologies, challenges and richness of researching the geographies of youth work. Decentring narrative methods in favour of ethnography was essential to capturing the primacy of relationships, the significance of the embodied and emotional and the place-based nature of youth work. However, more than this, ethnographic approaches needed to be aligned with youth work principles, collective dynamics and localised politics. At times, methodological strategies and research agendas – the desire to learn about research participants and their learning, lives, and places – had to be laid aside in favour of a mutual learning to be together. We came to understand both research and the learning that goes on in youth work settings as processes that are simultaneously individual and collective, private and public, cognitive and emotional, spatial and political.

This paper aims to study the relationship between working while studying in college/university and education mismatch among employed youth in the Zambian labour market.

The study uses data from the 2014 School-to-Work Transition Survey and a multinomial logit model to examine three education-mismatch categories: undereducated, matched and overeducated. The paper also examines heterogeneities by education level and gender and uses empirical and subjective approaches of education mismatch.

The evidence shows that employed youth who worked while studying have a higher likelihood of having well-matched jobs. The subgroup analysis by education level reveals no significant relationship between working while studying among employed youth with higher education (secondary and above). However, employed youth with lower education (primary and lower) are less likely to be mismatched for the job. The linkage between the education system and the labour market needs to be strengthened to support a smoother school-to-work transition for youth. Additional support to enable exposure to the right type of work during youth's college or university studies could increase job match and reduce labour market inefficiencies.

The paper provides insights into a significant challenge faced by youth in developing countries, i.e. finding a suitable job for youth's level of education.

A positive perception of work helps counteract the stress and psychological loss because of non-optimal working conditions. This paper aims to hypothesize two pathways through which social-psychological resources in the workplace contribute to positive work perception: one pathway is direct and the other is through the mediating mechanism of youth’s internal resource.

Filipino working youth from a government program for out-of-school poor youth, or working students enrolled in a free night high school, completed pertinent scales of the Multicontext Assessment Battery of Youth Development.

Co-workers’ endorsement of work values and their joint exercise of resilience-building skills build youth’s positive work perception. Youth’s personal initiative contributes to their positive work perception by its direct influence and also by its mediating mechanism.

The cross-sectional survey of this study does not allow for a definitive temporal progression from resources to positive work perception as does a longitudinal study.

For poor working youth, the threats of a financially bleak future can be tempered by an attitude that recognizes work not only as financially necessary but also as beneficial to one’s growth. The social-psychological resources in the workplace and the youth’s emerging personal initiative jointly contribute to a positive perception of work.

The current research shifts the focus of analysis from disadvantageous employment conditions to the affective and motivational aspects of employment and uses the conservation-of-resources theory to plot the flow of resources from the workplace to the worker.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, it seeks to voice the concerns of educated youth in Egypt as they describe their work options and preferences. Second, it seeks to highlight the gravity of the policy gap in addressing work informality, drawing on some of the international experience in this field.

Qualitative research in the form of in-depth interviews, desk-review of policies, and descriptive statistical analysis of a recent national survey of labour in Egypt.

A large proportion of educated youth work within the realm of informality and there is a clear policy gap in addressing this issue. Contrary to what would be expected, young people value access to social security and work stability. They face systemic hurdles related to access to such benefits. Because of the legacy of guaranteed government hiring of the educated in Egypt, young people express a great appreciation of work in the government, for virtually being the only employer offering job stability and social security in the labour market.

This paper addresses a gap in the literature on youth employment in Egypt, where there is a dearth of research focusing on the lived experience of employment precariousness. The majority of studies in this field relies on statistics with little qualitative research voicing the views of this group.

Reforms are more urgent than timely to extend social security and other measures of social protection to workers within the informal economy.

The paper builds on primary data and provides insights about the way educated youth perceive their working conditions and options. The paper also provides a discussion of the social security system in Egypt, its coverage, and possible reform approaches.

Purpose – At the turn of the 21st century, popular claimsmakers made a series of claims about the benefits of volunteer work for youth: that volunteering would reduce youthful self-absorption with peer groups, introduce youth to people different from themselves, foster macro-level understandings of social problems, and connect youth to the community. This article examines youths’ experiences of volunteer work in order to determine which claims are realized and how.

Methodology/approach – I conducted in-depth interviews with 45 youth, aged 15–23, who engaged in volunteer work with a wide variety of organizations.

Findings – Youth did not always realize these claims and when they did, many did so through mechanisms different than those suggested by popular claimsmakers.

Research limitations/implications – Because this is an exploratory study which uses a purposive sample, the findings provide direction for future researchers to more fully investigate how youth realize the benefits of volunteering and under what conditions.

Practical implications – In order to make volunteering a valuable experience for as many youth as possible, volunteer coordinators need to be cautious of uncritically absorbing public claims.

Originality/value of paper – Youth speak for themselves about the value of volunteering and challenge popular claims made about youth and volunteerism.

This paper aims to explore the experience of one large Irish youth work organisation, Foróige, to measures introduced during the initial phase of COVID-19 in 2020. In the face of the unprecedented crisis including the closure of schools and curtailment of many youth services, this paper examines how the organisation responded and adapted its service offering.

Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 senior managers and youth officers in Foróige to explore their perspectives on the organisation’s response. Participants were purposively sampled from across the operational management functions and also from regional levels and youth workers engaging in work “on the ground”.

Shifting from a face-to -face, relationship-based to a distanced mode of engagement with young people, colleagues and volunteers required significant adaptation of Foróige’s service model. Innovation took place both in the delivery platform and fundamentally, in its service orientation. The accelerated move to online youth work brought about by the pandemic enabled the organisation to embrace and learn from the challenges and opportunities posed by digital technology. Responding to the immediate and tangible needs of young people in receipt of services, staff found themselves working with families at the more basic levels of intervention.

This paper provides new insights into the nature of non-profit service innovation during a time of unprecedented crisis management. It highlights characteristics of organisational agility that can assist organisations in managing crises, while also pointing the way towards a more flexible operating model for youth work service delivery.

Within the framework of potential efforts and strategies to employment generation for young people in Africa in general and Ethiopia in particular, the agricultural sector is increasingly considered as an important sector and a valuable means for poverty reduction, the promotion of economic development, and youth's economic independence. Renewed hope is placed on the sector to offer sustainable livelihood prospects for the rural youth. Yet, the success and sustainability of the sector require a proper understanding of how households allocate youth labor time in the sector and whether agricultural labor supply is responsive to economic incentives such as shadow wages. Using gender- and age-specific plot-level panel data, we systematically analyze the impacts of shadow wages of each household member on youth agricultural labor supply across types of farms. The results indicate that agricultural shadow wages matter for the youth's labor supply in the sector, but the impact differs for male and female youth. We also show that trends and patterns of youth labor supply vary across gender and whether they work on their own farm, and so do their labor returns. The results are consistent after controlling for individual heterogeneity and instrumenting for possible endogeneity. Taking into account the intensity of youth's actual involvement in the family farm, own farm or off-farm work instead of their stated intentions, the results challenge the presumption that youth are abandoning agriculture, at least in agricultural potential areas of Ethiopia. Instead, the frequent narrative of youth disengaging from agriculture may be a result of methodological flaws or data limitations. The findings suggest that it is necessary to invest in agricultural development to enhance labor productivity and employability of young people in agriculture.

Research pertaining to young people, frontline work and faith is fairly limited. This qualitative article proposes that often faith and “on road” youth work are intertwined. This paper aims to explore the experiences of nine frontline practitioners, those who work with young people in a range of settings. The crux of the discussion is focused on how the religious and cultural views of practitioners impact their frontline practice, as it relates to supporting the young person’s needs. The authors suggest that understanding frontline practice as it relates to faith is imperative to our ability to effectively engage with young people “on road”.

This paper took a qualitative approach, where semi-structured interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. This allowed the formation of the following three core themes: incarceration, religiosity and “on road” youth work; the nuances of religion and identity “on road”; and the “pains of ‘on road’ youth work”.

The findings within this paper suggest that faith and “on road” youth work are intertwined. In that frontline practitioners’ personal religious views, and importantly the understanding they have regarding the array of religious identities adopted by young people (YP) is helpful in engaging YP across the board. This paper highlights the complexities between identity, faith, faith-based support and hard-to-reach communities.

This paper explores the complexities between faith on “on road” criminology/“on road” youth work. This area of study is fairly under-researched. This paper seeks to build on existing research surrounding YP, further exploring religiosity from a UK context.

This paper aimed to explore the lived experiences of frontline practitioners in Birmingham UK, many of whom work with YP from Black, Asian or minority backgrounds. Therefore the findings cannot be generalised.

This paper’s intention is not to stereotype YP, but to raise awareness of the subjective experience of faith and religiosity on the frontline.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there are few studies that explore the concept of “on road” criminology and “on road” youth work. Therefore, findings from this study are important to develop further understanding.