A review of research on "neither in employment, education, or training" (NEET) youth in Hong Kong

IntroductionThe NEET acronym means "Neither in employment, education, or training. " It may apply to both adolescents and adults; however, it is normally used to describe youth aged 15-24 years in the transitional period from the end of schooling to work.Baggio and colleagues (1) observed that NEET youth are a variegated population that includes various subgroups sharing different patterns of related issues. A distinction could be made between short-term and long-term NEETs. Being NEET for a while could be almost physiological, particularly in some Western cultures. It may be just a break, and it may be time spent creatively; for example, some NEETs may actually decide to be temporary so, because they are looking after their children or parents, or because they are trying to develop their artistic or musical talents, do some voluntary work, or decide to take a gap year before higher education. Instead, being a long-term NEET is less likely a matter of choice, but a difficulty in re-integrating into the active part of the population and society. This first distinction suggests that not all NEETs are necessarily "vulnerable" youth lacking of cultural, social, psychological, and human capital. However, society and public opinion tend to understand the phenomenon of NEET youth in a rather normative and deploring way (2). For example, in Hong Kong NEET youth are named "Double loss youth," meaning that they have dropped out of school and are unemployed; in Mainland China they are labeled as "parasite single," emphasizing that they depend on parents financially, or they are named kenlaozu (the tribe that relies on the old), or daidingzu (the tribe of undetermined); in Japan they are sometimes referred to as "hikikomori"(those who have chosen acute social withdrawal and school refusal); finally, here, in some Western countries they are named "Boomerang Kids," meaning that they go back to the family after graduation, and keep on depending on the caring and financial support from their parents (3). Damon (4) observes that today many youth are "failing to launch," meaning that they live longer with their parents, lack motivation for a career, struggle to make a transition into adulthood, and most importantly they seem not to find a life pursuit that inspires them.According to results from the Youth Purpose Project (a four-year nationwide study among youth aged 12-26 years old) about just one-fifth of adolescents are involved in activities they are passionate about and know what they want to do with their lives; however, the majority of youths are still lost, with no clear direction and at risk of never fulfilling their potential. They are in need of guidance to help them to find their way: some are "dabblers" who show very diverse and apparently unrelated interests and have no real commitment; others, "dreamers," appear not to have any concrete goal or plan and show no real understanding of how to achieve objectives. According to the author, this situation is the result (in an American context) of short-sighted thinking, where adolescents tend to find short-term solutions to get through life rather than ask important questions like "What kind of person do I wish to become? " and/or "What do I want to accomplish with my life? " However, other studies show that NEETs are due to the changing economy and labor market more than the internal dispositions of youth or other social and cultural considerations. Then, unemployment can be either a cause or a consequence of withdrawal from society; for instance, the condition of being NEET may gradually weaken one's ability to relate to others and adapt to the environment, so that the longer one remains disengaged with the outer world, the harder s/he may find it to engage again. Thus, it is important to examine this phenomenon more in depth and see how it varies across cultures, societies, and times; we should avoid jumping to conclusions and simply stigmatize the younger generation, as if they were the only ones responsible for their condition. …