ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the macro, institutional level. We discuss the emergence of “youth unemployment regimes” in Europe, that is, a set of coherent measures and policies aimed at providing state responses to the problem of unemployment and, more specifically, youth unemployment. We show how our four countries locate on these two dimensions as well as within the conceptual space resulting from the combination of the two dimensions. This will provide the context within which civil society organizations active in the field, as well as the young unemployed, find themselves and set the tone for the chapters to follow – and, as we expect both the meso- and micro-levels to relate back to differences in such a macro-level dimension of youth unemployment. The chapter discusses more specifically how active and passive transfers may impact on the personal, social, and political life of the young unemployed.
