That today's young people lack necessary employability skills and are insufficiently ‘job ready’ on leaving education has been a dominant political discourse within Western societies for nearly 50 years. The fact that, in this context, many young people have almost routinely faced challenges in accessing good-quality work and careers of choice over this period has been a topic of high concern for governments, employers, academic researchers, media and families alike. The 2008–12 economic recession deepened anxieties still further, as youth unemployment spiralled across Europe, reaching 21 per cent in the UK, compared with 8 per cent across the labour market as a whole (Francis-Devine, 2015). Together, these institutions have systematically tended to conceptualize the problem as an individualistic issue, a ‘supply-side fundamentalism’ (Peck and Theodore, 2000) that positions young people– and their insufficient capabilities– at the heart of the matter. Perceived as damaging for a competitive and sustainable economy, a key activation within the UK, as in other neoliberal economies, has been to invest in bespoke training schemes to enhance young people's workplace-specific skills. Across the diverse regions of the UK, as well as across the spectrum of industrial and occupational sectors, a broad range of work ‘entry route’ schemes has burgeoned for young people of all social and educational backgrounds.

The starting point for this book is to explore what it is like for young people to undergo employability training as a pathway into work in the UK. Recognizing that this is a wide-ranging and somewhat ‘baggy’ category, and that young people's employment opportunities vary significantly across the regions of the UK (EY Foundation, 2016), we look at four different schemes in order to capture some of the diversity encompassed: employability skills in the North East; enterprise on the South Coast; internships in London; and volunteering in Glasgow, Scotland.