Abstract
In postwar Japan, the transition system from school to employment has been linear without interruption. But today's youth in Japan are going to live their own life-cycle that is different from the standardized and stable one of which the older generations have experienced. It is the post-Fordism life-cycle, which is disorderly and fragmented. The purpose of this paper is to derive a perspective on how young people find their own pathways and what support policies and practices are necessary for them in the modern era of unstable employment.
First, I made a critical analysis of the frameworks and actualities of Youth Independence Support Policy that Japanese government has implemented since 2003, and revealed characteristics and problems of this policy. According to my analysis, Youth Independence Support Policy in Japan is work fare-type policy which links welfare to work narrowly, because it emphasizes on supply-side labor market policy which intends to improve the match between youth and business enterprises by developing youth's career awareness. It introduces the private sector in the provision of service as well. It seemed that this policy has not reached young people with difficulties and even functioned to exclude them. Moreover, it was backed up with the fact that more youth with relatively serious difficulties beyond envisioned has entered Youth Independence Training Camp (Wakamono-Jiritsu-Juku).
Next, in order to find some view points and practical directions for youth's pathway and youth support beyond Youth Independence Support Policy of a kind of work fare-type social policies, I took two tasks. One is to find them from my analysis of support activities of some self-sustaining organizations in third sector for youth with difficulties, who the policy has not reached. Here I analyzed youth support activities of two nonprofit organizations and derived the conceptional distinction between employment and independence, communal relationships and networks in their locality, and the creation of intermediary labor markets and social enterprises. Another is a theoretical task. In learning from some new social reform ideas such as full-engagement society and basic income, which has been already argued in Europe, I discussed the concept of socio-useful activities without limitation of paid employment and universal social citizenship which does not link paid employment to welfare benefits. Through these tasks, I found some view points and practical directions that is, the conceptional distinction between work and independence, the one between paid employment and socio-useful activities. Furthermore, they paved the way to collective social engagement for young people, while securing the right of work and creating new employment and activities. Those view points and practical directions have been condensed to form the term 'universal social citizenship'.
