Molina, Julian (2017) Intervention work: an ethnography of ‘NEET to EET’ transitions. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

The thesis examines the practices through which professionals organise interventions with young people who are not in education, employment or training – so-called NEETs. The thesis aims to contribute to a literature on ethnomethodological studies of work by offering a praxiological re-specification of how professionals organise and account for these interventions with cohorts of NEETs. By drawing from ethnographic fieldwork with four groups of professionals and practitioners, the thesis develops the notion of ‘intervention work’ to describe the practical knowledge, skills and methods that are used to organise transitioning young people ‘from NEET to EET’.

The analytic chapters present ethnographic materials drawn from participant and nonparticipant observation in ‘perspicuous settings’ where professionals put interventions with NEETs into action. The first analytic chapter describes the documentary practices through which employment-related service practitioners deliver a wage-subsidy program and how they make sense of the identity of clients by discussing and documenting troubles. The second chapter focuses on how youth service staff talk about young peoples’ participation on a traineeship program through remarking upon their observed conduct and talk, demographic background, demeanour and appearance. The third chapter examines how local authority staff meet a statutory requirement to regularly produce ‘data returns’ for the Department for Education about the ‘participation status’ of young people. The chapter describes how members display their knowledge and skill about how to reflexively orientate to this data as intelligible. The last analytic chapter explicates how lobbying work is conducted in a membership organisation concerned with the provision of young peoples’ education and skills. The chapter presents materials from regular board and operational meetings about how members of an advocacy group coordinate their activities through making sense of how to produce ‘institutional products’ with which to conduct and display their lobbying and campaigning work. The empirical content of the thesis includes transcripts of talk-ininteraction, field notes and descriptions of the practical activities through which members made sense of their intervention work on the topic of NEETs. The thesis aims to contribute to a literature on ethnomethodological studies of work and contemporary debates about the implementation of state interventions.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Unemployed youth -- Great Britain, Youth -- Employment -- Great Britain, Youth -- Employment -- Government policy -- Great Britain, Post -- compulsory education -- Great Britain
Official Date:	2017
Dates:	Date Event 2017 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Sociology
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Mah, Alice ; Whiteside, Noel
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	vii, 322 leaves : photographs, illustrations, charts
Language:	eng

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