Youth Opportunities: Education, Employment and Social Inclusion

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Youth in the Arab Mediterranean Countries (AMCs) are the largest demographic with almost a third of the total population aged 15 to 30. However, despite the opportunities this large group represents in terms of economic growth and development, Arab Mediterranean youth face a series of obstacles and challenges that prevent these opportunities from being fully realized. Indeed, youth in the Arab region have the highest unemployment rates, mainly due to inadequate education systems.


Therefore, this Work Package will mainly intend to research challenges and obstacles young people face in the countries studied. To that end, research will provide general socio-economic information about the five countries of study, with a specific focus on education, employment and labour market issues. Most of the data and statistics will be analyzed with a special focus on young people, and the reasons and outcomes of their social exclusion. Moreover, with a geographic scope of five countries, the SAHWA Project allows for comparisons between Algerian, Egyptian, Lebanese, Moroccan and Tunisian youth (in terms of conditions, data, mechanisms of inclusion/exclusion, etc.).

On this basis, significant research effort will be conducted in order to analyze how the governance systems and institutional structures can meet youth demands in order to realize their potential, while paying special attention to the concept of social inclusion. Finally, this research will be guided through the following research question:

To what extent do education systems, access for employment, and consequently the distribution of income contribute to empower young people in Arab Mediterranean countries or do they reinforce existing social exclusion patterns? If the latter is the case, what other institutions, education, or labor market reforms (might) mitigate this effect?

Deliverables

- Policy report on social dialogue based on semi-structured interviews with main actors in social dialogue

- Cluster of Scientific papers dealing with education, informal economy, education and working opportunities, entrepreneurship and innovation.

- Handbook on best practices on entrepreneurship and innovation

-on the local context perspective and national perspectives

Coordinator

University of Lleida (Spain)

Partners involved

Barcelona Center for International Affairs (Spain)

ANIMA Investment Network (France)

Center of Arab Women for Training and Research (Tunisia)

Centre de Recherche en Economie Appliquée pour le Développement (Algeria)

Education for Employment (Spain)

Institut des Hautes Etudes de Management (Morocco)

Middle East Technical University (Turkey)

Finnish Youth Research Network (Finland)

Lebanese American University (Lebanon)

American University in Cairo (Egypt)

University of Liverpool (United Kingdom)

University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy)

University of BREMEN (Germany)

Plovdiv University (Bulgaria).

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Employment Education