Young NEETs in the EU South: socio-spatial and gender divisions in between the Great Recession and the Covid-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT The 2008/2009 global economic recession and the Covid-19 pandemic fuelled a heap of social and economic problems, including growing youth unemployment and inactivity. Amidst this pressing conjuncture, female youngsters living in economically deprived regions have been affected the most. The paper in hand studies the changing analogies between young women that are “Not in Employment, Education or Training” (the so-called NEETs) and young men of the same status, between 2008 and 2020, across the regions of four EU South countries. By employing a mixed-methods approach, namely analysing quantitative indices and semi-structured interviews, we put the gender divisions and the geographically uneven distribution of NEETs under thorough scrutiny. Furthermore, by adopting a spatially-sensitive perspective, the paper elucidates key underlying factors behind NEETs’ persistence in some of the EU’s least-prosperous regions. Along with several structural and institutional factors, peripherality, regional specialization and gender divisions are indicated as crucial, though commonly neglected, dimensions of contemporary youth disengagement.