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The Concept of Employability

 
1. Introduction
 
‘Employability’ plays a crucial role in informing labour market policy in the UK, the EU and beyond. The concept of employ abilityhas been deployed to describe the objectives of the economic strategies promoted by important supranational institutions and labour market policies at national, regional and local levels (see for example OECD,1998; CEC, 1999; ILO, 2000; UN, 2001). In the UK, employability has emerged as a central tenet of so-called ‘Third Way’ policies:’a cornerstone of the New Labour approach to economic and social policy'(Haughton et al., 2000, p. 671). Despite, or perhaps because of, its ubiquity, the concept of employability continues to be used in a number of contexts and with reference to arange of meanings (Hillage and Pollard,1998; McQuaid and Lindsay, 2002). Indeed,for some, employability is little more than a ‘buzzword’ that is more often used than properly Understood (Philpott, 1999); or “a fuzzy
notion, often ill-defined and sometimes not defined at all” (Gazier, 1998a, p. 298).
 
• What Is Employability?
• Working Definitions
 
As noted above, the concept of employability continues to be applied within a range of different contexts and to both those in work and those seeking work. Accordingly, while it is simple enough to assign ’employability’a straightforward dictionary definition, such
as ‘the character or quality of being employable’,arriving at a working definition is a far more complex process. Perhaps understandably,employers have tended to view employability as primarily a characteristic of the individual. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has defined employability thus Employability is the possession by an individual of the qualities and competencies required to meet the changing needs of employers and customers and thereby helpto realise his or her aspirations and potential in work (CBI, 1999, p. 1).Supply-side and Broader Concepts of Employability
 
Employability and the ‘Supply-side Orthodoxy’
 
It might therefore be argued that the concept of employability—particularly as applied within many supply-side labour market policies—has been ‘hollowed out’ in many current theoretical and policy discussions. In many cases, the interactivity supposedly at the centre of the concept appears to have been replaced by a singular focus on the individual and what might be termed their ’employability skills’. The employability skills or individual assets possessed by workers and job seekers, and the extent to which these tie in with the immediate needs of employers, have come to define many policy-makers’ identification of skills gaps and understanding of the concept of employability.Lister (2001) characterises the current movement’s approach as conceded with the supply side of ’employability’ rather than the demand side of ’employment’.
 
Towards a Broad Model of Employability Following from the above section. Table 1 illustrates our own re-ordered ‘holistic’ framework of employability. It has three main interrelated components, or sets of factors, that influence a person’s employability: individual
factors; personal circumstances; and extremely factors. The examples here and in Table 1 are not exhaustive. Some examples of policies related to each component are briefly discussed in this section. Of fundamental importance are the interactions between each
of the components.
 
Infrastructure Networks Meetings and Forums
 
The story of contacts between Egypt’s April 6 Youth Movement and former Serbian Otpor activists (Rosenberg, 2011) is well-rehearsed: after the combined protests of factory workers and educated urban youths in April2008 ended in repression, a member of the movement went to Belgrade to be‘trained’ in non-violent action. It is credible that this training, and on going e-mail contact, had some influence on the tactics of the Egyptian uprising,although to draw a straight line from American veteran activist Gene Sharpvia Otpor to the Egyptian protests (see Jacobs, 2011) seems rather more fanciful.But the web of connections between the post-2010 activisms extends far beyond this one node and, more importantly, beyond ‘anti-dictatorship’ activism. In this section we will illustrate some of these nodes and self-conscious cross-references, without suggesting that we are dealing with ones ingle network that connects all post-2010 activism.
 

Context: A Global and Precarious Generation

 
We argue that the post-2010 activisms are, in part, the revolt of a ‘globalgeneration’. Unlike their parents, the mobilized youths of today belong to a ‘precarious generation’ (Mabrouki and Leb`egue, 2004; Rosenhek andShalev, 2013), having grown up in a neo liberal environment of income insecurity with diminished state-sponsored safety nets, where neither work nor public services could be taken for granted—a situation that has now worsened because of the global financial crisis. Precarious working conditions along with the use of new ICTs have deeply shaped the repertoire of actions,forms of involvement and concept of the world of these activists (Juris andPleyers, 2009).
 

Meaning Subjectivities Demand and Value
 
The main outcome of these movements may lie in the deep transformation of the individual’s subjectivity, understood as affects, emotions and thoughts, lived and imaginary experience of the subject awakened both bythe resistance to power and expected norms and by the will to think and to act for oneself, to develop and express one’s own creativity, to construct one’s own existence (Touraine, 2002; see also Khosrokhavar, 2012). This transformation appeared to be highly contagious across fences and borders.The fact that Tunisians and then Egyptians lost their fear of repression and experienced freedom not only had an irreversible impact in those countries,but contributed to opening the horizon of the possible in other author itarianregimes, and fostered the idea that ‘it is possible to do something’, that citizen
mobilization may have an impact. It has found its strongest expression inthe courage of non-violent Syrian activists who have kept demonstrating inspite of the repression and subsequent civil war that has already killed tensof thousands of citizens.
 

Demands, Values and Practices: Democracy
 
On the surface, the Arab revolutions and Russian protests, which demand democracy, contrast with Western protests pointing to the structural limits of representative democracy. We posit, however, that both demand democratization:they do not conceive of democracy as an actually existing form of government, but as an aspiration that can be approximated and needsto be continually worked at. Like the East European and South American democracy movements of the 1980s before them (Glasius, 2012), the Arab revolutions are not about achieving liberal democracy as in the West.
 

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Demands, Values and Practices: Social Justice
 
One thing that marks out the post-2010 activisms as different from their alter-globalization predecessors is their emphasis on demanding social justice from their national governments. Whereas previous movements tended to target the international financial institutions or global corporations,the more recent protests have accompanied this with an insistence that governments should re-take responsibility over the hold of financial markets and big corporations. They denounce rising inequalities and t he collusion between big corporations and policy makers at the national level.
 

Since the rise of the knowledge economy, creativity has come to take on acurious double status, both exclusive and mundane. On the exclusive side,the “creatives” have almost rhetorically displaced the entrepreneur of the 80sand 90s as the messianic hope for the economy, especially in the emergent forms of post-crash economy. The creative industries have embraced cultural entrepreneurs in this rebirth (or is it rebranding?), and artists, inventors, digital bohemians and originators of all persuasions have acquired a special and almost magical status that is remote from the somewhat perilous and short term everyday realities of most work in those industries. At the same time, we are urged to recognize and release the creative impulse in all of us – creativity everywhere – as we all contribute to realizing the dream, or staving off its terrible alternative.
 
Abstract
 
Vocational education and training measures have featured prominently in the responses of EU member states to the economic crisis that erupted in 2008. Existing training programmes have been expanded and new programmes introduced. In addition, employers and trade unions have negotiated new entitlements to education and training. This article explores the various training measures that have been adopted since the start of the crisis and compares countries with different types of training systems. Particular attention is paid to the UK, Ireland and Germany. The article also examines the role that training measures have played in governments’ active labour market programmes. While the European Commission has called for a ‘training-first’ approach to the unemployed, the article suggests that ‘work-first’ principles are becoming even more dominant.
 

Introduction
 
The jobs crisis has led all European Union (EU) member states to expand existing active labour market programmes (ALMPs) and introduce new measures aimed at reducing unemployment. Education and training have featured prominently among these measures and international agencies have regularly stressed the importance of pursuing a training-intensive path to recovery. The OECD (2009a: 19), for example, has recommended that countries should increase expenditure on labour market policies so as to ‘provide workers with the skills that will be needed as the economy recovers, including through the use of compulsory training programmes’, and has argued that training programmes are more appropriate than ‘work-first’ measures for vulnerable workers. The OECD’s emphasis on training has been echoed by its member countries and also by the European Union.
 
Training and labour market policy
 
The term vocational education and training (or technical and vocational education and training) can be thought of as referring to the ‘acquisition of knowledge and skills for the world of work’ (Hollander and Yee Mar, 2009: 41). This process of acquisition can occur within the education system (mainly at upper-secondary level) and through post-compulsory education and training. The term VET is, however, subject to a degree of conceptual ambiguity, given that universities also prepare young people for participation in the world of work (Bosch and Charest, 2010: 1). Furthermore, while there is a clear distinction between VET provision and general education in some countries, in others they are more closely linked (Bosch and Charest, 2010). This article, however, is primarily concerned with education and training measures relating to workers, whether employed or unemployed. To that extent, the definition provided above will suffice.
 
Education and training during the economic crisis Training for those in employment The European Commission intended that the rate of participation by adults in lifelong learning would reach 12.5% by 2010 (CEDEFOP, 2010). However, total participation rates for the EU27, as measured by the Labour Force Survey (LFS), have fallen since the mid-2000s. The participation rate for those aged 25–64 years peaked at 9.8% in 2005 and has fallen consistently since then, reaching 9.1% (below its 2004 level of 9.3%) in 2010. The participation rate for employees aged 25–64 years fell from 11.2% to 10.4% over the same period. As can be seen from Figure 2, however, declining participation has not been the experience of every EU member state. Some countries, including Denmark, Estonia, Sweden and Luxembourg, witnessed increased participation following the start of the crisis.
 
Training for the unemployed
 
The magnitude of increases in unemployment since the start of the crisis has varied according to workers’ levels of education. Between the third quarter of 2007 and the third quarter of 2009, the EU27 unemployment rate for adult workers (i.e. those aged 25–64) who were educated to no more than lower-secondary level increased from 8.8% to 12.6%. The increase in unemployment among more highly educated adults was comparatively modest. The unemployment rate for workers with upper and post-secondary (but not tertiary) education rose from 5.6% to 7% between 2007 and 2009, while the rate for those with tertiary-level education increased from 3.7% to 4.6%. However, the average figures mask substantial differences in the experiences of individual member states. In Ireland and Spain, for example, large increases in unemployment occurred across all levels of education attainment.
 
Why not say ‘social precariousness’ instead of precocity?
 
Is employability an empowering concept?
 
1. Reflect critically on the links between employability and precarity. Reflect critically on the different understandings of ‘employability’
 
2. Reflect critically on the assumptions of the concept of ‘employability’
 
3. Reflect critically on the effects of the concept of ‘employability’
 
Principles of essay structuring
 

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1. What is the question?
2. Why is it an important question?
3. How are you going to tackle it?
4. -What sub-questions need to be addressed?
 
Product code:Economics-QA81
 
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