News

New paper published: Becoming a Young Farmer in the Digital Age: An Island Perspective

We are pleased to announce that a new paper supported under our call for collaborative publications has just been published in the journal Rural Sociology.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ruso.12400

Becoming a Young Farmer in the Digital Age: An Island Perspective

This study investigates the career construction paths of young farmers and aims to contribute to the literature on the “young farmer problem.” Of particular relevance is this study’s focus on the potential of islands as a new career landscape in the digital age. Young farmers’ subjective experiences toward careers were analyzed based on narrative interviews, quantitative surveys and expert interviews from two EU islands: Crete and the Azores. Firstly, the study provides insights on the behavioral and cognitive dimensions of the career construction model by identifying followed career paths. Secondly, we turn our focus to the role of digital communications in career construction and, thirdly, the study examines the geographical dimension of the model. We find that involvement with farming entails complex career patterns that evolve into passion. Whether their involvement follows planned or unplanned paths, protean career attitudes, desire to experiment, and a strong sense of career self-concept play significant roles in shaping the career narratives. “Experience” and “management” dimensions of online communication drive the construction of careers as a part of a professional identity mechanism. Our results reveal that the “island effect” (maintaining a part-time farming culture) plays a role in cohesive singular and multiple career self-concepts.

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New paper published: Rapid Evidence Assessment Protocol for the Meta-Analysis of Initiatives, Interventions and Programmes That Target Rural NEETs

We are pleased to announce that a second paper supported under our call for collaborative publications has just been published in the journal Social Sciences. The team was led by Paul Flynn and involved other members such as Vesela Radovic, Alen Mujcinovic, Štefan Bojnec and Francisco Simoes, as well as Veronica McCauley. Congratulations to all the team. Check the link below:

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/11/8/362

Rapid Evidence Assessment Protocol for the Meta-Analysis of Initiatives, Interventions and Programmes That Target Rural NEETs

1School of Education, National University of Ireland, H91 TK33 Galway, Ireland
2Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences, University of Sarajevo, 71000 Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
3Institute for Multidisciplinary Research, University of Belgrade, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia
4Faculty of Management, University of Primorska, SI-6101 Koper-Capodistria, Slovenia
5University Institute of Lisbon, 1649-026 Lisbon, Portugal
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Svetlana Drobyazko
Soc. Sci. 202211(8), 362; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11080362
The acronym NEET refers to youths aged between 15 and 34 years old who are excluded from employment, education or training. However, historically, the NEET demographic has been depicted as a largely homogenous group. Against this backdrop and given the dependency of rural economies on agricultural practices for survival, such practices have been in decline for a number of years, seriously threatening rural communities’ sustainability. While these rural NEETs can present as registered unemployed and also within the reporting statistics of various different state-funded initiatives, interventions and programmes, in the case of Rural NEETs, there is a dearth of reporting categories that highlight the specificity of this group resulting in their presence being largely overlooked within official dissemination. In order to advance this emergent field of research, presented here is a Rapid Evidence Assessment protocol that will aid future work of the authors and for others to adapt and/or adopt. View Full-Text

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SPRING 2022 CALLS ARE NOW OPEN

SPRING 2022 CALLS ARE NOW OPEN

JOIN AND PARTCIPATE IN OUR CALLS

If you are a member of our Action or not, you can join us to our SPRING’22 CALLS.

You can see bellow the links to each call with all the information of how to participate. You will be able to publish papers, attend online and face-to-face conferences, visit some institution for a short research, organice events to disseminate our Action and more!

(more…)

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Our COST Action CA18213 will participate as speaker in the next Track-IN kick-off conference

Our COST Action CA18213 will participate as speaker in the next Track-IN kick-off conference

Tr@ck-IN project kick-off conference:
Rural NEETs transition to the labour market: The role of Public Employment Services

ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa
Cidade Universitária de Lisboa – Av. das Forças Armadas, 1649-026 Lisboa, Portugal 

Our colleagues from the EEA Grant Project “Track-IN: Public employment services tracking effectiness supporting rural NEETs” will participate have their first Kick-off conference next 4 and 5 of April 2022 in Lisbon. Our Action will participate in this conference as a expert in one of the sessions.
(more…)

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Rural NEET Youth Action CA18213 has published a new Special Issue in Youth & Society

Our COST Action CA 18213 about Rural NEET Youth has just publiched a new Special Issue in Youth & Society journal

This supplemental issue focuses on the challenges associated with European rural NEET (Not in Employment, Education, or Training) youth socio-economic inclusion. For NEETs, the transition from childhood to adulthood is both complex and fascinating, fraught with risks of marginalization and precarity. Such challenges have been compounded by assumptions regarding homogeneity evident in publications by the EU and the OECD which place all NEETs within age ranges without recognition of the complexity of life in this demographic. In 2019, across the then EU28 member-states and non-EU states, the proportion of NEETs was recorded as higher in rural regions when compared with the same rate in towns and suburbs or cities (Eurostat, 2020). Notably, an uneven NEET distribution by the degree of urbanization was evident in many eastern or southern European countries, with gaps between cities and rural areas ranging from 10 to more than 20 percentile points. Clearly, there is a need to explore the greater proportions of rural NEETs that occur in European countries with sub-protective welfare regimes and fail short to support school-to-work transition among the most vulnerable youths (Schoon & Heckhausen, 2019).

You can read here all the papers published in this Special issue.

Special Issue “Challenges Associated With European Rural NEETs Youth Inclusion” in Youth & Society

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COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is a funding agency for research and innovation networks.
 
Our Actions help connect research initiatives across Europe and enable scientists to grow their ideas by sharing them with their peers. This boosts their research, career and innovation.

Official COST Web: CA18213 https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA18213/