Charanya rightfully asked in a comment: What concrete solutions can be researched further? Also in relation to policy recommendations which outlined broadly what policy makers should consider, we ask how they could be implemented? If we manage to answer these questions we might be getting closer to actual policy change to propose.
@ Valentina & Rebecca
- Edgeryders navigating between local and global scales: “GLOCAL AND HOLISTIC?” (Nirgal); “I feel that the distinction is too widely put. In my experience of the edgeryder community it has been fairly apparent that the will of the members is one of global change. (Involute Conduit)
- (also for @Dunja): Translating portofolio careers into socially accepted norms and professional paths: Who has an interest and responsibility to contribute towards ensuring this happens? What is a reasonable strategy for achieving it and who needs to be involved in those efforts? What resources are needed by whom in order for it to happen?
- What message from Edgeryders to older generations? Relieve pressure to perform the way they think we should perform, having coherent & ascending career paths.
- What message from Edgeryders to other young Europeans struggling, for example to those accepting a lot of compromise to get them through the day? How can they maximize opportunities? "What about young people who do find employment, but are prevented from growing personally and professionally because of a job that doesn't fit their aspirations and interests?” (anonymous)
- How to provide support for current, alternative ways of making a living, in terms of providing basic conditions for relative stability and income? (just a thought here: the minimum income policy was touched upon in platform conversations, but not in your paper).
Backing argument: From your paper, policy evaluations do admit temporary and part time employment are dangerous: they’re minimum paid work=lack of financial security and result in precarity & instability. Edgeryders are also proof that the job paradigm as our parents knew it is running out of steam, and deem their new ways of making a living, whilst creative, unsustainable (Ben, Ildim).
- How to tackle young people’s aspirations to work autonomously? Backing arg: Read hierarchies, exploitation, work-personal life imbalances as outlined by Lucyanna; “a greater number of individuals would take job security over precarity if that were ensured a reduction in the working week and recognition that not all work should be made accountable.” (Ben Vickers); distinguish work subordination without rights from true autonomy.(A.Cottica)
- How to support radical innovators that are not eligible for funding schemes, do not need a lot of money and operate at micro scales, not necessarily under an organization? How to devise the metrics by which this value can be read and translated? (Ben Vickers) Backing arg: Edgeryders’ work responds to pressing needs in society (make common resources more accessible to all), but proper support is not given to them to continue to do so.
- How to push for more mobility and remove barriers for citizens that are mobile learners/workers? Backing arg: Policy evaluation of mobility schemes for youth shows positive results in terms of openness and skill acquisition.
- How can network culture, so strongly rooted in Edgeryders practices and known to be useful at pooling income and costs, be directed at facilitating access to resources such as (more formal) work opportunities? distributed networks as platforms for providing the kinds of support -- like pooling cost and risk, organizing subsistence functions in the informal sector outside the wage/salary employment relationship, etc. -- that make temporary employment and free agency less precarious (interesting comment from Kevin Carson)
- *Although not mentioned in any comment, what to do about job recruitment processes which part of the community deems as flawed in matching resources and needs?
@ Prudencia and Piotr
- Where is the rupture in education policy and labor policy? “Why do politicians assume that by skilling people you will also generate the opportunities for those skills to be extended through work?” (Bridget)
- Where do social mobility policies fail in Europe? Are the effects of mobility or immobility even relevant if a system of recognition is either not in place or turned upside down, and perception of status is more fluid? Edgeryders are not putting a price on qualifications or status, and don’t evaluate their peers according to it: “ the only solution I found is to ignore and replace the education system for me personally and in my personal area of influence”, “not judging people by their formal education” (Neodynos)
- How to accommodate people with diverse set of skills or experience? “We don't seem to have a place in the world/the workforce for someone who, though bearing credentials in one thing, also happens to be incredibly competent at something else as well.” (James Hester)
- How to progress towards a new learning culture that is based on cooperation, lateral thinking, self organization, creativity? (CPT); e.g. teaching students how to learn before having them memorize facts (James Hester); Promoting non-formal and informal learning, as useful and complementary it is to formal education, won’t do the trick, since they don’t foster those kind of skills.
- How to support people creating free educational content and supporting services, both online and offline? (K)
- What do online learning platforms, like Edgeryders, need in order to become more inclusive? “What disadvantaged people need is access to computers and wifi, and time to spend with them. The issues are infrastructural rather than curricular.” (Bridget) (also see last question below for Barbara)
@Barbara (my general feedback– still awaiting comments)
- Where are the cracks in inclusion policy? Not clear from the paper if youth public policy to fails or not; it feels like it’s a work in progress from EU and COE and no judgment can be made. If it does fail, where exactly? If it doesn’t, but there is still considerable distance to go towards achieving full inclusion: we can accept YiA to be a good example, although you don’t mention indicators to prove that, but what is the most urgent need to be addressed? I find “reaching the ones with fewer opportunities” too vague and not answering to why those with more opportunities aren’t or don’t feel included either? (perhaps I’m missing something?)
- How can network culture, so strongly rooted in Edgeryders practices, can be better directed at facilitating access to resources, for example by pooling income and costs?
- How can online tools be used for more inclusive policy or as equalizers? We have the opportunity to further demystify the idea of online spaces as excluding the less well off and the less educated, see Alberto’s post for evidence; the e-illiterates aren’t the same people as those traditionally excluded, this survey shows.