Rural youth's transitions
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Dariusz: Welcome to UNDER 30, the podcast developed by the EU-Council of Europe Youth Partnership. Today we'll be discussing the new study Rural Youth Transitions before and after the COVID-19 pandemic published by the partnership. My name is Dariusz Grzemny and together with Tanya Basarab from the Partnership we'll talk with Francisco, one of the authors of the study, and Ketrin from Rural Youth Europe about how rural young people's opportunities and challenges have changed since the pandemic. Through this conversation, we hope to give a clearer picture of daily life for rural youth and highlight some practical ideas to better support their transitions.

[00:01:00] Hi. Hello. So before we start discussing the topic of rural youth, the topic of today, maybe we can start with the round of introductions.

Francisco: Hi. Hello. my name is Francisco Simões. I'm a researcher at the University Institute of Lisbon, and I have a background in psychology, especially in community psychology and also as a youth worker in rural areas.

Ketrin: Yes. Hello. I am Ketrin from Rural Youth Europe. I am the chairperson of the organization and in my daily life, I am a youth worker in school,

Dariusz: Tanya.

Tanya: I am Tanya. I am part of the Youth Partnership Secretariat, and together with my colleague Lana, we have been leading on this, coordinating this project.

Dariusz: Thank you. Okay, let's start talking about the research and also the situation of rural youth. The new research on rural [00:02:00] youth, and transition to adulthood was published, Tanya, can you give us a little bit of the context of this research within the work of the partnership?

Tanya: So this is not the first research project on the topic and looking into realities and the diversity that young people in rural areas represent. But, it's probably our biggest research project because it also relies on data that we have collected through the project. And I will let Francisco explain a little bit more later. But maybe what I can say is that young people living in rural areas has come back to theagenda of youth policy. I has been probably on the agenda in other fields on and off. And, two important steps have been taken in the EU context. There is, the goal six connected to the EU youth strategy, which is, taking rural [00:03:00] youth forward and some of the presidencies, I recall a few years ago during COVID, actually the Croatian presidency before that, the Romanian presidency, focused on this goal and try to develop some messaging, some common action, and,There have been council conclusions recently on the topic and also on making Erasmus and other EU programs more accessible to young people living in rural areas. On the Council of Europe side, the most recent process that has lasted maybe a year and a bit was the drafting and adoption now of a Recommendation on Access to Rights of Young People Living in Rural Areas. That recommendation is now adopted fully by the Committee of Ministers. That means there is a commitment to doing something together among the member states. And I am sure that statutory bodies will soon begin working [00:04:00] on, if not already working on, roadmap for implementation of that reference framework. So this research project is there to support these processes in both partner institutions and especially in the member states, by highlighting data that perhaps can show maybe something new or something different, some angles that we haven't seen before. And, it covers quite a wide range of areas. Of course for what youth policy can really target is maybe narrow, but for example, when we planned, it's very important to highlight that when we planned the research, we had input from civil society, but also from different parts of the institutions that that are engaged with this topic. So I think there is a broad expectation as well, and hopefully there will be a good engagement with the results of the research for the benefit of young people in rural [00:05:00] areas.

Dariusz: Thank you, Tanya for this context. Francisco, you are one of the people who are involved in the research. Maybe let's start with explaining or setting the context on, what are the main challenges, and also opportunities of young people living in the rural areas, when it comes to their transition to adulthood. Are these opportunities and challenges the same like they have been for a couple of last years? Or did they change, did the new challenges or opportunities appear.

Francisco: Well, there are many opportunities and challenges that are common to young people in other areas, but there are also singularities. I would start by highlighting that, one of the main challenges to do with the fact that, while some indicators are improving in rural areas such as, the rates of school enrollment or the transition to work in terms of lower numbers of young people not in employment or nor in [00:06:00] education or training. At the same time, we see that, particularly in southern eastern countries and also in the most remote rural areas, the numbers have not improved that quick or that fast. And, this means that even after the pandemic, this transition is slower more difficult. Another specific challenge has to do with a gender divide. It is very clear thatwomen. Struggle more to find a pathway to independence in rural areas. More often they are involved in caringroles, which means also thatmore often they are part of a group that we call the inactive. So, young people thatmay be out of the labor market due to caring roles, health issues, or other situations. However, there are really interesting opportunities emerging. I would say, one is related to the [00:07:00] green transition and all the changes in rural economies, which one way are challenging, but on the other hand, they can create new opportunities in terms of jobs, whether it is in circular economy, new ways of farming, but that is happening at a very slow pace.

And, there's a lack of skills to really respond to the work demand there. And I would add also the opportunities coming out from digitalization. Of course, rural areas struggle with, for instance, the lack of good coverage of wifi networks. But at the same time, remote work still remains a question mark in terms of how this can change rural communities. In a way it can really bring young people with more qualifications and better socioeconomic conditions through rural areas. So, there are conflictingtrends here. And some opportunities might be really interesting in terms of [00:08:00] what the youth sector can bring to rural young generations in the years to come.

Ketrin: Thank you Francisco. Ketrin, would you like to add or reflect on that also from your perspective? Yes, I would totally agree what has been said and at the same time there are so many basic stuff, that is, either lacking or missing, that makes the bigger gap between the urban and rural areas such as transportation. When we talk about rural or remote working like home offices,

yet at the same time there is requirements to be in sometimes at the office, and then still, if we talk about that, then the distances are quite far and there is no other options, but cars then young people are really reliant in rural areas to their cars or their, like their transportation option.

[00:09:00] And when we talk about women in rural areas, what I have come across for the past two, three years when I have been to Rural Youth Europe that for example, our member organization in England is Young Farmers Clubs, but mainly the young women there are working in education systems. So, exactly what you were mentioning, that the job opportunities for young women are also limited, or they don't have access to the jobs.

Dariusz: So we have a little bit of the picture of different challenges and opportunities. Of course, a lot of them are explained in the research. Let's move into what is the support when it comes to transition to adulthood for rural youth. And let's start with policies and institutional support.

So, how these policies, the national, local maybe orinstitutional support, address or doesn't address as well the needs of [00:10:00] rural youth. Francisco in the research, you clustered this kind of support into I think three clusters that were, that were there and we see very clearly that there are some countries that are doing quite okay.

Not very well, but quite okay, but there are some who are just lagging behind. Can you say a little bit about that?

Francisco: Yes. One, one of the layers of the study was actually to add the policy analysis and~.~ understand how, youth policy specifically targeted or did not target rural youth as a specific youth subgroup. And one of the main conclusions, I would say, one that we expected to find is that, it's very unusual to find packages or programs that are aiming specifically to rural youth. In general, rural youth is targeted through universal, policy, packages, whether in rural development field or the youth sector or employment or even [00:11:00] education. But we found very few examples of policy measures targeting rural youth in different countries, whether they are EU or non-EU. The difference is that in some countries, the youth sector in general and the youth policy area are more developed, meaning that, young people in rural areas benefit from a more developed policy framework. That's the major difference. I would also add that at the EU level,

we also tried to understand how how much rural youth was on the scope of major EU policy packages. And indeed, they are not. Let me give you two examples. For instance, in the resilience and recovery facility framework, we see that some countries, very few countries, one good example is Spain do have specific measures to target rural youth in terms of, for instance, access [00:12:00] to employment services or training, But, usually these, these major frameworks do not focus so much on rural youth. What we see is that there is a very big national difference between the countries in terms of how they target, specific subgroups and although rural youth have become more important for the reinforced youth guarantee, there are still very little measures covering, in practical terms, the needs of rural young people across the different countries.

Ketrin: So, it is, as mentioned, really important how it is implemented to the regional or local level. And that makes a big difference. Myself, coming from Estonia and as I went through the study that it was one of the good examples in many cases. We see in our country that yes, we focus on, covering the whole country or the different areas of the country.

We [00:13:00] need to mention that our country, Estonia, is quite small and it's maybe more reachable. At the same time when we talk about Estonia, we have very institutionalized youthwork or youth policies, which means, that we rely on quality youth workers who are professional youth workers and we don't have that many volunteer based youth actions or youth workers, which would mean at the same time that, If there is lack of funding in some cases, or lack of visibility, then we are missingopportunities for transitioning into adulthood as well. And, what I would say also in Estonia is really great practiceright now, is that we try to keep our young people in schools, which would make their next steps easier or better.

And in the schools we focus as well to developing soft skills.

Dariusz: Thank you Ketrin, we will come back to this when talking about [00:14:00] recommendations, coming from the research. This is the policy or institutional level, but also , it's very clear in the research that informal support like family, friends, and community, they play a vital or central positive role in rural youth transition.

What is the role of this family, community, informal networks, also civil society organizations, in the rural youth development. Maybe we start with Ketrin with you from your experience or the experience of the Rural Youth Europe, what

is the role of these informal networks and civil society organisations.

Ketrin: Yes. Ourselves being the network for rural youth, it means, it's really important part in our work, and we see thisbig impact on the young people through our, for example, international mobility where we gather also young people with that similar background from different countries.

And they make their little communities in [00:15:00] those events during the week and they go back and, like they will learn peer to peer and then go back to their home countries or home clubs or places. And then, empower other people from their areas, which means it's really important to bring young people together, either in the same country, in the same region, or also on European or international level,

in order for young people to feel and. and see that there's other people as well with the same aspirations and same ideas or similar ideas to grow with each other. When we talk about the family or the community, like local community. Then at the same time, it's really important that young people there are as well as seen and heard as any other group of people.

We cannot forget that young people have their own needs. That's why we are also here today talking about that rural youth have their own needs. And, it's really important yeah, to engage with young [00:16:00] people also in decision making processes in the local, regional, and national levels of course, European level as well.

But if the young people are engaged in their communities, they are more likely to stay in their areas or come back after their studies.

Francisco: Well, the other results clearly support what Ketrin said. And,I would start by saying that, in general,in the research field, we tend to have this very negative idea about the role of what we call the soft infrastructure. So local social ties, the quality of social capital, the quality of community leadership, uh, because some reports tend to show that that kind of complicates the transition to adulthood in rural areas. So this report shows completely the opposite. It shows that, compared to other factors such as age range or gender, or even socioeconomic status,informal [00:17:00] support provided by peers, by neighbors, by the family, so by the community in general, is linked to better outcomes in terms of perspectives of finding decent and meaningful jobs, greater likelihood to stay in rural areas, and to contribute to rural communities, greater use of cultural, leisure and sports facilities. So that is connected with participation and at the same time, an overall stronger satisfaction with living in rural areas. So this is a very important result because it shows that policies really have to translate thissocial support into a real asset. And I think the big challenge now is to understand how this experience of peer support, intergenerational collaboration and making sure that young people also are also involved in decision making at the local level is transformed [00:18:00] in policy making and policy measures. across all levels from the local level to the EU level.

Tanya: I think that this is one of the crucial messages of this research. It's not a new message, but it's much more nuanced already during COVID when we did the shorter mapping of approaches. It, was clear there that sometimes young people living in rural areas, they're just seen as one cohort and they are as diverse as the people living in urban areas and their aspirations, but also their strength are as diverse and it's really an asset for the communities where they live. And as Ketrin was saying, if they are involved, they're likely to more likely to stay and live in those communities because they

can use, let's say, and give back to the community and engage with it differently and not just feel invisible or feel as [00:19:00] maybe a number, a statistical number. So this message for me is crucial from the perspective of the youth sector. This is something we have to speak to everyone about because it's not, it shouldn't be seen that, okay, we just need to invest more in rural areas in transport and young people will be staying there. It's not the case. Some young people will circulate, but for example, the study looks at local mobility, so it's localized mobility, not only these international exchanges, so it really highlights that young people are ready to drive to some other rural community to do something there

if that is something that fulfills them and gives something to the community, and then they find meaning still living where they grew up. And it's very important to work with that. To work around it and not only with policy measures, because sometimes we say policy, [00:20:00] it might be confusing for people, but a policy translated in practice means young people who are engaged, who are seen, and who contribute and feel meaning of life.

Dariusz: Thank you, Tanya, for this reflection. Let's maybe move to the outcomes of the research and the recommendations that are coming from, from the research

and talk a little bit about how the policies, but different funding mechanisms, also different programs that are, that are offered to support rural youth. How they can be adapted or what should be prioritized in them in order to make them more effective to support rural youth?

Francisco: Yes. Well, of course,as you said in the beginning, this is a quite complexresearch project. So I won't go into the details and I will just highlight some measures that we think really come out from from the results, from the [00:21:00] findings. I would place it in at two different levels,

the policy measures themselves and also the funding mechanisms. At the policies and programs level, I would say that one of the reflections thatclearly coming out from the results is that the public support infrastructure, the institutional infrastructure in rural areas is often limited and is shrinking in many cases. One of the ways to make it more efficient is to really work on making sure that service delivery, whether it's employment, education or other areas, looks for coordination of public services that can come through different models. Let me give you an example. Some countries are adopting the model of the one-stop shop where in the same place young people have access to all the services, whether it's welfare, education or employment support. Another way that policies can support rural youth [00:22:00] is to expand the use of digital tools, for instance, to target those with fewer opportunities. Although this comes with some caveats and, this should really be well prepared to be implemented because there's some techno optimism that digitalization is going to solve everything, including in rural areas, but they can be useful to out to those in, in a more vulnerable situation. And in terms offunding, I think that one of the issues that we really concluded is that one hand it is really important that there's a better coordination between high level, I would say, European aspirations and what's happening on the ground. There's a big mismatch in, it depends on the countries of course, but a big mismatch between the ambitions for rural youth and then the funding at the local level and the support for the policies at the local level. It is also clear that in terms of funding mechanisms, it [00:23:00] is really important to combinetop down policy initiatives with the involvement at the local level of rural youth. Finally, two other elements that are important is one on one hand sure that some programs, especially Erasmus plus, can find ways to more specifically target rural youth in their calls, in their initiatives. Also to balance universal policies that are targeting everyone, every youth, irrespectively of where they live, some more nuancedand some more specific mechanisms tailored to target rural youth needs.

Dariusz: Thank you, Ketrin, from the experience of Rural Youth Europe, how do you see these policies and programs and funding mechanisms adapted, in order to [00:24:00] better support rural youth? Uh.

Ketrin: Yes. As already Erasmus Plus was mentioned, I will start with an example how rural youth have to go through longer process in order to prove that they are also there. Last summer we had a youth exchange in Estonia and all of the participants were from rural youth organizations and to, in order for have a bigger transportation budget since coming from rural areas, it takes longer.

It takes moremoney. We had to go through the process to prove where they come from and prove like extra documents to show where we are coming from. At least this time we were able to do it, but then there's other examples wherewe understand that eco-friendly travel is really important and only public transportation is covered.

But when we come again from rural areas where the public transportation is notthe option that you [00:25:00] could choose, rural young people have to cover some of the things themselves, whereas urban area young people will just go to the airport by the public transport.

So this is one of the examples how rural youth is sometimes not that ma much seen or could be improved that we actually need that car option as well in the budgets. But on the other hand, cannot still forget about what we need in is the investments into the internet, like in local level that everywhere is internet access.

And at the same time, what we and some of our member organization have established or their communities have established is multi- functional community houses where there's serviceswhat was also mentioned that there can be facilities that are multifunctional. So in order for young people to be and and succeed, we need the spaces in their areas as [00:26:00] well, not only in bigger places.

And that would help if the focus would also go on that direction where there's mentorship programs, cultural events that come closer to the young people in rural areas.

Tanya: Maybe I can add, because, one of the elements of the research was to have a day with representatives of organizations from rural areas,especially from the countries that went through the more thorough policy and measures analysis. But it's just to say that it's not the first time that organizations that are based in a rural community explain how much more effort they have to put building trust, getting some support, sometimes the space, sometimes something else from the local community. And this need permanent rebalancing and negotiation and winning friends and so on, it takes a lot of their energy, which could have [00:27:00] gone in a, in the context of an urban environment where there is an open youth center. People go there and they think about planning an activity directly with young people, whereas an organization that is acting in a small community, they have so many other aspects of their daily struggles to take care of. And it takes a lot of their energy, which should actually or could go directly being in touch with the young people and doing actions that they would like to do together.

So that's an important aspect that needs to be taken into account in civil society policies at national and local level, in community building policies, and especially in policies of decision making in local contexts. All those communities that have elected young people on their decision-making bodies in their [00:28:00] local councils or local mayor elections, they all are happy to have a youth dynamic and that is something that is driving their community. It's giving it hope and it's driving it forward. So it's really important to keep in mind that apart from the actual activity, a lot of the organizations that are active in local in rural areas, they have another layer of struggles to manage. And that can be taken maybe under the scope of youth policies in national and local contexts.

Dariusz: Thank you Tanya. I would like to ask you to continue and tell us a little bit about what is going to happen now with the study and are there any activities planned around the study within the partnership work program.

Tanya: Right now we [00:29:00] are, in the process of publishing the study,as a separate publication. Hopefully that will be a resource and it'll raise debates and reflections among actors in rural and youth sectors. We have in October research conference where we will also be presenting the findings of the study, especially targeting policymakers in different national and European level. And, we hope that if there is a need and desire, depending also on the roadmap that will be developed for the recommendation in the Council of Europe, if there's a need that we move towards developing something more concrete as a support resource based on the research. So that would be something that we would see in our next work program.

Dariusz: Thank you for joining us on this episode of Under 30. [00:30:00] If today's conversation inspired you, don't forget to follow the podcast and share it with friends or colleagues interested in youth policy, youth research, and youth work. To learn more about the latest EU Council of Europe youth partnership research, and upcoming opportunities, check out the links in the show notes and stay tuned for the next episode.

Bye-bye.