Fresh insights into urban youth inequalities
Many young people face great challenges in finding employment and affordable accommodation in certain European cities, while in some locations access to proper education is limited, widening existing inequalities. We spoke to Éva Gerőházi, from Metropolitan Research Institute, Budapest about the UPLIFT project’s work investigating socio-economic inequalities in 16 urban areas across Europe.
The 2008 financial crisis had a significant impact on the housing and employment market, which in turn affected other sectors of the economy. While nobody was immune from the effects of the crisis, young people starting out on their careers were among the most severely affected. “Young people are among the most vulnerable in the employment market during a crisis,” acknowledges Éva Gerőházi, an economist at the Metropolitan Research Institute in Budapest. The crisis widened existing inequalities and limited the opportunities available to young people in terms of both jobs and accommodation, an issue at the heart of Gerőházi’s work in the EUbacked UPLIFT project. “The project is focused on urban social inequalities,” she outlines. “The project brings together 15 partners, including housing experts and specialists in several other social policy fields.”
Urban areas
This research is centered on 16 urban areas across Europe, with Gerőházi and her colleagues looking to build a deeper picture of inequality in different regions, with the aim of ensuring that the voices of young people are heard in the development of education, housing and employment policy. Reports have been written on the situation in each of these urban areas, while eight of them have been selected for more in-depth analysis.
“We conducted 40 interviews with vulnerable young people in each of these eight locations. 20 of them are between the ages of 15-29 now, while the other 20 were young in the course of the financial crisis,” says Gerőházi. “Through these interviews we tried to capture the position of these people who were young at the time of the financial crisis and look at whether they were able to catch up or not.”
These 16 areas have very different economic strengths and social housing policies, with researchers looking to dig deeper into the specific challenges they face and their impact on young people. One of the cities researchers
are looking at in the project is Amsterdam, which is experiencing a serious housing affordability crisis. “There is a high proportion of social housing in Amsterdam but there is still a lot of pressure on the housing market. This is because Amsterdam is a growing city, it has both internal and external migration,” says Gerőházi. “The demand for housing is much higher than the local rental system can provide, so a high proportion of young people are on the threshold of being vulnerable in the housing market, even if they are well educated and have a decent salary. They may have to spend a high proportion of their income on rent.”
The situation is very different in certain parts of central and southern Europe, where more young people tend to live with their families as they enter adulthood. This is partly a necessity, as they often can’t afford their own accommodation, but it’s also more culturally normal for a 25-year old to live with their parents. “The affordability problems facing young people in the housing market are much less problematic in these central and southern European regions, despite the fact that Northern and Western Europe are generally thought of as being more prosperous,” says Gerőházi. There are also significant variations in the employment market. “Young people are the most vulnerable in the employment market. But there are very big differences between Southern Europe and the West and North,” continues Gerőházi. This vulnerability in the employment market seems to be fairly temporary for most young people in Northern and Western Europe. As they get older, gain qualifications and experience, they are able to establish themselves. “They are often able to gain a more stable position in the jobs market,” outlines Gerőházi. However, Gerőházi says the south was particularly badly affected by the financial crisis, and young people have remained vulnerable for longer. “The unemployment rates among young people in southern Europe remain very high. While the economic recovery following the financial crisis generally reduced problems in the employment market, southern Europe is an exception,” she outlines.
any power imbalances are fully considered. In the case of Sfântu Gheorghe, many members of the Youth Board came from less prestigious vocational schools, so much of the preparatory process was about empowering them and building their self-esteem, while it was also important to ensure they were comfortable when meeting the institutional stakeholders. “At the first meeting, the institutional stakeholders were not allowed to react to the young peoples’ opinions on the educational system. They had to listen first,” says Gerőházi. In Amsterdam, the youth cohort was very different. “It was comprised mainly of university students and people in the early stages of their careers, mainly educated young people, but still very vulnerable in the housing market” outlines Gerőházi. This group were able to interact with decisionmakers much quicker than their Romanian counterparts, and they moved on to analysing the problem, co-creating solutions through a reflexive policy-making process, then testing, implementing and monitoring them. While the circumstances in each of these urban areas may be very different, Gerőházi says young people tend to face some similar problems across all of them. “There seem to be common problems, such as lack of information and access to services, as well as mistrust of service providers,” she says. Eight case study reports were produced on the basis of the project’s research, which provide guidance on how these issues can be addressed.
“We look at how a reflexive policy-making
UPLIFT
Urban PoLicy Innovation to address inequality with and for Future generaTions
Project Objectives
The UPLIFT projects has multiple aims, first to accumulate knowledge on youth vulnerabilities in diverse urban locations of Europe in the domains of education, employment and housing and second, to create methodologies of Reflexive Policy Making piloting in four cities (Amsterdam, Barakaldo, Sfântu Gheorghe and Tallinn).
Project Funding
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870898.
Project Partners https://uplift-youth.eu/about-us/ourpartners/
Contact Details
Project Coordinator, Éva Gerőházi, senior researcher Metropolitan Research Institute 1093 Budapest, Lónyay u. 34 E: gerohazi@mri.hu W: www.uplift-youth.eu
Co-creation
The project’s agenda includes not just conducting research into urban social inequalities, but also working with young people in these areas and giving them a stronger voice in policy development. In four of the eight cities where interviews have been conducted – Amsterdam, Barakaldo, Tallinn and Sfântu Gheorghe – a co-creation process has been implemented. “A Youth Board was set up, while in parallel a group of institutional stakeholders was formed,” explains Gerőházi. Eventually the youth boards and institutional stakeholders started working together to address key topics, which differed in each of the locations. “In Amsterdam and Barakaldo housing was the focus, in Sfântu Gheorghe it was education, and in Tallinn it was services for NEETs (young people Not in Education or Employment or Training),” says Gerőházi. A great deal of care has been taken to ensure that young people have the confidence to contribute to the co-creation process and that
process can be used to improve the effectiveness of local policies,” says Gerőházi.
The project’s research shows how this process of co-creation can be used to address social inequalities around education, employment and housing, taking into account the fact that local policies are often nationally driven. While local reflexive policy-making may not be a means to change larger structures, Gerőházi and her colleagues are trying to highlight changes that might be implemented under the current legal and institutional settings. “It’s more about the way that institutions behave and how they are regulated,” she says. A reflexive policy-making process will also encourage a general shift in attitude, which Gerőházi hopes will last beyond the end of the project. “This reflexive policymaking process creates a new energy and legitimacy behind changes to local policy, which we hope will continue on beyond the end of UPLIFT,” she continues.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ frsc.2023.1130163/full
Éva Gerőházi (MsC in Economics), the coordinator of the UPLIFT project works as a senior researcher for Metropolitan Research Institute, Budapest since 1997. During her career, she has gained rich experience in diverse fields of urban development, like energy poverty, rehabilitation of marginalised areas and welfare systems in different urban contexts.
Whom we call vulnerable may change city by city depending on the local housing and employment conditions, but all of them can be empowered to be agents of their decisions.Disseminating the results in Sfântu Gheorghe, May 2023. The UPLIFT consortium, June 2023.