Introduction

The analysis of the transformation of contemporary modes of socio-economic regulation leads to a consideration of the subject of young people's professional transitions as the means of entry to regular paid employment. This chapter reflects on the changes in the national arrangements that affect young people's professional transitions, the policies implemented in this regard, and the respective effects of young people's insertion into the labour market. The first section draws on a European research project entitled ‘European comparisons about the mechanisms of young people's professional insertion: strategies of actors, production of regulations, devices, genesis’, which examined the employment policies of six countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, the UK) aiming at adjusting young people's trajectories to changed social and economic constellations. The focus here lies on the norms that inspire such different measures and the relationships between key actors involved. The second section deals with the question of how recent policy changes are reflected in new forms of professional transitions with a specific focus on the case of Spain. The final section concludes by drawing the two perspectives together.

A comparative approach to analysing the professional transitions of young people

International comparison is the privileged tool that can be used to confront different patterns of access to paid employment in different national contexts. Consequently, comparative research has been articulated around two axes: on one hand, the detection of the cross-sectional trends leading to a transformation in the professional transition processes of young people in the reported countries; and, on the other hand, the identification of national specificities that arise from historical patterns of policy development and from the institutional dynamics typical of each of the countries involved in the comparison.

The following four factors have played a decisive role in determining young people's access to employment in the countries under consideration:

• • Technical and organisational change has led to a radical change in the structure of employment and the qualifications required by young people to enter the labour market. This development does not only affect qualifications stricto sensu (knowledge and skills), but also a set of wider and more imprecise skills: initiative, adaptability, mobility and professional flexibility. However, this tendency coexists with the maintenance of neo-Taylorist management and organisation that has been adapted to the new technologies. In all the cases, the recruitment procedures used by employers to assess young people's employability have been transformed.