ABSTRACT
Surrogate employment always involves a variable balance of power between the centralizing and standardizing effects of intervention and the centrifugal influence of ‘market forces’. This chapter offers some theoretical ideas for developing a comparative study of programmes of training and work experience adopted in Europe and America. It argues that the stock response of governments to the problem, despite wide variations in political creeds, may usefully be conceptualized by the related notions of ‘surrogate employment’ and ‘surrogate labour market’ (SLM). SLMs can be analyzed through the conceptual apparatus used for labour markets in general. The chapter considers a major example, the Youth Training Scheme (YTS) developed by the British Government since 1983. It explores the supply and demand for the labour of school-leavers which the Scheme created. In the YTS surrogate labour market several such pre-market influences are evident, the major ones being gender, race, school attainment and family background.
