Originally published here.

In recent decades, young people have faced a series of crises, from the 2008 economic crisis to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Walby (2015, p.14) defines crisis as ‘an event that has the potential to cause a large detrimental change to the social system and in which there is lack of proportionality between cause and consequence’. Crisis as theorised by Walby (2015) pays attention to the underlying social systems where if unstable, short temporal events can produce large disproportionate changes. Several crises have disproportionately changed conditions in the labour market away from ‘full employment and relatively rapid, smooth and uncomplicated school-to-work transitions’ (Roberts 2009, p.357). Over a decade after the 2008 global economic crisis, young people have disproportionately borne the brunt of the economic recession, with poverty levels for the young remaining higher than in pre-recession times (McInnes et al., 2014). The last decade saw a generation of young people being referred to as a ‘lost generation’ because, despite the economic recovery, there have been slow and insecure education-to-work transitions (Antonucci et al., 2014).

Research has shown that while some young people may recover following crises, others suffer long term from unemployment and underemployment in the labour market (Droy et al. 2019). With the COVID-19 pandemic, this generation is at risk of experiencing the same patterns of fractured transitionsFootnote1 into employment. Transitions occur in contexts of change and continuity (Furlong and Cartmel 2007). By transitions, I mean the different routes young people take into employment (Roberts 2007). Well-documented changes to the labour market, such as increases in precarious work, low wages, low skill and underemployment, contribute to the fractured transition of young people into employment (Furlong and Cartmel 2007; MacDonald 2011; Roberts 2020). These social changes have increased the risk of marginalisation of young people from the labour market (Furlong and Cartmel 2007). This article argues that the risk of marginalisation is amplified in a racialised society like the UK for some young people because the risks are broadly distributed in ways that reflect racial hierarchies (Furlong and Cartmel 2007).

For some young people, there has been continuity in terms of the persistent racial inequalities in employment outcomes. Li and Heath (2020, p.863) refer to the ‘stickiness’ of unemployment for racially minoritised (RM) people after periods of economic crises. Racially minoritised is a term coined by Gunaratnam (2003, p.17) ‘to give some sense of the active processes of racialisation that are at work in designating certain attributes of groups in particular contexts as being in a minority’. I use this term instead of ethnic minorities or Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic labels. Racialisation here is taken to mean the process through which socially constructed racial categories (labels), initially assigned by the state, are grounded in histories of oppression which then manifest in social institutions that leads to racial hierarchies where those at the top of the hierarchy receive economic, social and political rewards (Omi and Winant 2015; Feagin 2006; Bonilla-Silva 1997).

In the current crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, the young in the UK are bearing the brunt of job losses. The number of young people unemployed for more than 6 months has doubled from the start of the pandemic, the highest rate recorded in 5 years, with young people accounting for over half of those unemployed (Wilson and Papoutsaki 2021). Their analysis of unemployment in the COVID-19 pandemic shows that ‘the fall in employment rates has been four times greater for young Black people than for young white people, while the fall for young Asian people has been nearly three times greater’ (Wilson and Papoutsaki 2021, p.4). Long-term unemployment, one of the potential consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, increases the future occurrence of unemployment and lower subsequent earnings in employment (Droy et al. 2019). For RM young people, the consequences are magnified. RM people’s careers lag behind their counterparts, they are less likely to be successful in finding re-employment, and their earnings suffer as a result of previous periods of unemployment (Li and Heath 2020).

Like the generation of young people transitioning to employment after the 2008 economic crisis, the COVID-19 crisis has led to this generation of young people being referred to as a ‘lost generation’ (Tamesberger and Bacher 2020). As attention turns towards recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is an opportune time to reflect on youth employment policies that can adequately support young people, particularly RM young people’s transition to work. This crisis presents an opportunity to challenge underlying systems in society in a way that is positive for RM young people (Walby 2015). Therefore, we must take note of race as a potential marker of disadvantage that can make RM young people more vulnerable to marginalisation in the labour market. While youth studies have traditionally acknowledged that the impact of race on RM young people’s experiences was quite distinct, it has maintained that the disadvantages were due to their positioning within class structures (Furlong and Cartmel 2007). Consequently, the impact of young people’s positioning due to race structures has not been an explicit focus of inquiry within youth studies. As part of efforts to rectify this gap in youth studies, this article attends to the ways in which race and racism intersect with other markers of disadvantage or privilege that make racial identities pertinent to transitions into employment (Harries et al. 2016).

This article makes the case that race structures influence RM young people’s transitions into employment. The study of transitions asks that we pay attention to the structural issues that contribute to fractured transitions and highlight the complex interaction between agency and structural constraints (MacDonald et al. 2001). While there is an ongoing sociological debate on agency and structure (see Martin and Dennis 2010), in this article, agency is viewed as a constituent of structure (Sewell 1992). The premise of this article is that the entanglement of race and opportunity structures constrains RM young people’s transition into employment. In particular, this article focuses on who ought to be responsible for supporting RM young people’s transition, shedding light on what should be included in youth employment policies and service delivery. Wright (2012) argues that there is substantial scope to investigate how employees within employment support services can use their agency to challenge racialised transitions to employment. Therefore, this research’s analytical lens examines racialised transitions and highlights how employees in employment support services can exercise their agency in supporting RM young people’s transition into employment.

This article uses data from a case study in the UK gathered from focus groups with young people and interviews with employees from a local council’s employment support service. The views of young people, including RM young people mostly of South Asian heritage, on youth employment support needs were gathered through a co-creation initiative (Youth Views). The young people’s views were then presented to employees from the employment support service to improve service delivery. Substantiated by empirical evidence, this article concludes that supporting RM young people’s transition into employment requires engagement with employers to tackle the racialised structural disadvantages experienced by RM young people in the UK labour market.

Race structures have been around for centuries and have structural stability, and there is no reason to assume that attempts to interrupt or minimise its effects will be easy (Seamster and Ray 2018; Meghji 2020). Yet, in the wake of the global #Black Lives Matter movement, which has shone a spotlight on race structures, it is important to consider how the reproduction of inequalities can be stopped.

Therefore, it is important to study transitions and not just in terms of class structures but also race structures. This article highlights how the entanglements of race, class and opportunity structures shape the period of the life in which RM individuals’ life chances are established (MacDonald et al. 2001). In particular, this study of transitions provides a glimpse of the structural reasons that can explain such different outcomes for RM young people as they reach adulthood and perpetuate inequalities in employment outcomes (Macdonald et al. 2001). The core argument thus far is centred around challenging the idea that fractured transitions are solely due to individuals’ failings without due considerations of failings in the labour market, failings that arise from race structures such as discriminatory practices, which in turn limit the labour market participation of RM young people. In seeking to understand whether employment support services can support RM young people’s transition into employment, this article concludes that employees within employment support services have a role to play through employer engagement in challenging racialised transitions.

As minimal empirical work on how race and youth are constituted in contemporary youth studies (Harries et al. 2016), this article seeks to add to our understanding of how racialisation impacts RM young people’s transition into employment. This study has generated analyses of theoretical and policy relevance. This article has contributed to an under-researched area on racialised transitions of RM young people to employment. It has widened the focus of youth transitions into employment by discussing the impact of race on RM young people’s experiences of the labour market. Like Russell et al. (2011), this article has shown that employment support services need to acknowledge the complexity of the cultural, social and economic matrix in which RM young people’s lives are embedded. While the findings from this study cannot be generalised, they can be replicated in similar contexts to the one described in this research (Denzin 2010). Single case studies such as this study make room for developing, testing and spreading robust suggestions for challenging racialised transitions into employment (Flyvbjerg 2006). With young people at the ‘crossroads of social reproduction’ (Furlong and Cartmel 2007, p.139), focusing on employer-oriented approaches that target discriminatory practices can avoid the present generation of RM young people becoming a ‘lost generation’.

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