Coordination: ICS (Portugal); Co-coordination: UCSC (Italy) and VU (Lithuania); ILO.

Specific goal: To have mapped and validated the most replicable program of each PES tracking support type in improving rural NEETs’ employability, in all beneficiary countries, bY M28.
 

Theoretically, this WP operationalizes an examination of the risks/opportunities for personal development in the mesosystem (formal support) described by the bioecological model.

This WP addresses Challenge 2, the lack of studies about PES tracking support dedicated to vulnerable youths, including rural NEETs. This challenge requires systematic research efforts because vulnerable youths are expected to benefit more from public employment initiatives (Kluwe et al. 2017). However, rural NEETs have a record of poor connection with official services, due to a combination of factors. For many of them, schooling was a collection of negative relational and performance experiences with a long-lasting harmful effect on their engagement with public services (Simões 2018). In addition, some reports show that NEETs remaining in rural areas are mostly youths combining multiple risks (poverty, school failure, and low skills). PES tracking of rural NEETs is also complicated by these youths’ overreliance on informal support networks and suspicion about formal services’ capacity to satisfy their needs (Simões et al. 2017).

Methodologically, this WP includes Study 2, a comparative case study of different PES tracking support types programs (n=21; 7 per PES tracking support type; 3 per beneficiary partner country), in 5 steps: (1) Mapping: identifying all rural PES across the beneficiary countries, using Eurostat Labor Force Survey (2018) collapsed by degree of urbanization to delimit the territorial research scope; (2) Screening: through a short survey, to target rural PES tracking practices fitting the project; (3) Data collection: in-depth analysis of selected cases using a multi-informant approach (PES administrative data; program documentation analysis; interviews with PES managers; world-café sessions with NEETs); (4) Data analysis: combining qualitative data thematic analysis with its quantitative examination (e.g. descriptive and reliability statistics; correspondence analysis) to identify similarity/difference patterns among studied cases for each PES tracking support type; and (5) External validation of practices: most promising, replicable practice of each PES tracking support type validated by a panel of experts and stakeholders, for subsequent impact analysis.

WP learning results will uphold knowledge of the effects of employment initiatives targeting rural NEETs and increased use of impact studies among policymakers, by enabling the spread of knowledge about the most promising good-practices of different PES tracking support types. Findings will be streamed to one peer-reviewed paper and a manual of PES tracking implementation, supported by the activities described below.

Activities

1. WP team monitoring meetings implemented (M1 to M18)

2. Comparative case study protocol & guide delivered (M3)

3. WP study protocol implementation (M4 to M10)

4. Two short-term, transnational scientific missions for Early Career Researchers implemented (M18)

5. Peer-reviewed paper nº 2 submitted (M17)

6. One guide of PES tracking support types (M26)