NEET e Garanzia Giovani. Una politica di empowerment per i più svantaggiati?

Especially in the Southern European countries, the long-lasting European economic crisis has worsened the already difficult school-work transition of new generations, as the increasing number of NEETs in the EU witnesses. Even the idea of work socialization has weakened and the youngsters have been pushed to load up on their shoulders the burden of their “auto-socialization”. The European Youth Guarantee Programme (YG) claims to be considered as a successfully strategy for NEETs’ activation and employment, by promoting youth individual and professional empowerment. But his programme could meet this purpose if it acknowledges the different measures provided as a real chance of work socialization, intended as a “capacitating process”, capable to take into account both individual responsibilities and the role of socio-economic and institutional context in shaping life chances. Focusing on the Italian implementation of YG at the local level, the paper aims at investigating to which extent YG accomplishes these objectives.