Key words: Youth, educational reform, access to education, Argentina.

Today, the relationship established between education, youth and work has tended to be consolidated into one of the most important aspects of the developmental project in the various countries of the Latin American region.

Beyond the importance attributed to this strategic combination, we see that the insecurity of job offers, the questionable quality of public educational offerings, and the volatility of economic growth are inextricably bound to a trend toward concentration of wealth, the meritocratic distribution of social benefits and social dualization affecting mainly the younger generation.

From the implementation of education reforms in the decade of the 90s to the present, there has been an effort to build articulatory bridges between education and labor through programs, training activities and capacitation for supporting the transition of young people from schools to the labor market and adult life.

Despite the success of some programs for vocational training and the professional education of youth, the questionable quality of the formal and informal educational proposals; the segmentation and incoordination of the curriculum, the constant and elevated rate of unemployment; the proliferation of informal employment activities and the absence of political and institutional mechanisms call into question the supposed revalorization of the role of new generations as strategic actors of development. In this context one notes the loss of value of the proposals for education and vocational training that seem to be related to the problematic access to decent and productive employment.

The established discontinuity between the trends and dynamics of labor market development, productive economic strategy, cultural changes and fashionable identity models and the post-reformation structural educational models is unquestionably an exposed nerve in the debate over how to harmonize the education/work binomial among the youth. The concomitance of these transformation processes is progressively acquiring greater relevance, reinforcing the necessity for discussing more profoundly the question of the young protagonists and all the challenges and restrictions they face today.

The practices of exclusion and discrimination against different social groups (women, indigenous people, the poor, the elderly, the disabled, ethnic or religious minorities, the non-heterosexual) defined by features almost always adscriptive in terms of cultural and symbolic representations of what constitutes the "difference", fracture the identity of a society, negatively affect the sense of belonging to it for those who are marginalized, and therefore, undermine social cohesion. This is a complex phenomenon (...) that manifests itself subjectively in sociocultural representations, stereotypes, traditions and stigmas (ECLAC, 2007, p. 84).

As we can see, public policies aimed at young people do not have an up-to-date generational perspective, relevant and systematic, to take the place of the subjective characteristics and polyvalent biographies. The lackluster attention given by public administration and political and institutional management to the intrinsic diversity and heterogeneity of youth, is a major cause for young people’s invisibility in their diversity and uniqueness.

Due to the lack of congruence between public policies and programs, and the demands, interests and expectations of the younger generation, Rodriguez (2002) adds that:

Children who are cared for by mother-child programs, are not necessarily assisted by vocational training programs later on when they reach adolescence, or by housing programs when they set up new families, etc.

This being the case, even though we might have a much stronger political resolve, as well as far greater resources with which to operate, we would go on facing serious problems of management, making it more appropriate to look for alternative answers, and to address the issues we have pointed out —those whose solution, furthermore, might lie more closely within our reach (not the case with resources) (p. 71).

• Trends towards greater selectivity and socioeconomic exclusion (Fitoussi and Rosenvallon, 1997; Minujín 1998b);
• The transformation of contractual relations, the weak social protection, and the restricted forms of participation in the labor market as well as in political and institutional life (Tokman, 2003);
• The unpredictability and dizzying, transitory nature of the processes and institutions for change itself (Minujín, 1998a);
• The immediacy and flexibility which require constant adaptation by young people to the new structures of the economic and employment world (International Labor Organization [ILO], 2004);
• The lack of specialized political alternatives in the youth sector, and the lack of an intersectorial political strategy capable of providing an underpinning for all the programs and actions developed by the state and civil society, for the purpose of reducing the uncertainties and risks which permeate the transitions of young people (Carbajal, 2005; Gallart, 2000a; Jacinto, 2001). International Labor [ILO], 2004).

In 2000 in Argentina, unemployment among the youth population reached the highest level in that nation’s history: 46.6% for those aged 15-25 years ([ILO, 2001, 2002). However, the deterioration in social structure, economy and employment appears to have kept pace with an ever-increasing constriction of formal and productive employment and production, the concentration of wealth, the decrease in opportunities for participation in the social benefits of employment, and the low profile of the political proposals implemented in the field of educational training designed for teenagers and young people with difficulties in educational, work-related and social integration (Carbajal, 2005; Gallart, 2000a; Jacinto, 2001). International Labor [ILO].

The structural dissociation between compliance with the requirements of flexibilization, productivity and efficiency demanded of the units of production of services and products by the new macroeconomic patterns, and the negative consequences registered in the productive, occupational and social system, has opened a broad range of challenges exerting an inexorable demand for unified resolution by the state, the productive sector, and society as a whole (Zaffaroni, 2005).

During this period in history, across the spectrum of emerging economies, the paradoxical trend in the growth of macroeconomics was marked by an enlargement of the circuits of capital, a reduction of restrictions on private investment, a high rate of earnings by the financial and speculative sector, and the dynamism of monetary transactions. Indeed, none of this seems to have been concatenated to the creation of real jobs, the qualitative and quantitative expansion of social welfare and consumption among the citizens, a dedication to equal opportunities and social cohesion, support for ecological sustainability and the promotion of economic and productive structures and proposals (Beck, 1998, Bourdieu, 1998a, 1998b; Bauman, 2000).

However, the dichotomy created between the low generation of decent employment and the investors’ level of earnings, the flow of capital and the economic financial dynamism reflect one of the most substantive and contradictory characters of the economic model of the free market. This relativizes the importance of generating employment and in parallel, improving working conditions and social welfare while consolidating its global hegemony (Castel, 1998, 2005, Gorz, 1989, 2000).

After the state reform, there was a change in all the criteria and priorities which give rise to the whole array of public policies. Therefore, in the last 15 years, there has been an effort to address recidivism and to provide focused, short-term solutions for social structural problems: poverty, unemployment, socioeconomic inequality, poor quality of the education system, etc. In this sense, it is clear that many of the proposals and work programs such as the Youth Training Project, the Image Project and the Micro-Company Project, as well as professional training programs designed to remedy youth unemployment, did not consider other social fields where young people operate and interact (Mancebo, 1998; Aparicio 2007b).

When thinking about how to overcome the socio-economic exclusion, the unemployment, the low educational expectations of our youngest citizens, and the overwhelming carelessness that permeates the majority of their occupational activities, we encounter a major problem: the hegemony of a standard vision of youth and young people. As pointed out in Zaffaroni’s timely observation (2007, p. 50):

The category of youth as a cultural construction is permeated throughout with the characteristics of a particular social formation; while in Europe it is perceived as a stage of psychosocial protection, in Latin America it is the sector most affected by inequality and exclusion.

Young people are not a social unit with interests in common. They differ —the youth of urban poverty, those of rural poverty, indigenous young people, those punished by social violence, those distanced from the school environment, the abandoned, the hungry, the homeless, those deprived of affection [...] Their cultural configurations are different, their social ties— there is only one real point where they approach a real heterogeneity, and it has to do with time; the time of youth is the future. That of adults is the present.

The new phenomena of individualization and pluralization of social backgrounds —as analyzed further on— has tendedto relativize and “date” all the political strategy of training, instruction and socio-educational promotion (Gallart, 2000b). The standardization of the condition of the young person as a universal subject, restructured and almost stripped of historicity in our view, has contributed to an opacity of vision regarding young people’s life-worlds (Lebenswelt), diminishing their idiosyncratic, identifying, historic, subjective, affective and representational aspects (Thiersch, 2002; Thiersch and Grunwald, 2004, Bourdieu, 1999).

In this way, the persistence of the social label or seal on young adults in the adult world and the state’s ministerial, administrative and bureaucratic organizations has deepened the invisibility of their circumscribing, historical, social reality —namely, social institutions, games and power struggles; the interactions, the submissions, the survival strategies, the ways of consensus and negotiation; and the biographical and social projects, etc. (Margulis and Urresti 1997, ECLAC, 2001; Gallart, 2004a). That is to say:

This type of visualization dominated by the parameter of what the adult world identifies and defines as “youth”, on several occasions furthered the institution of generalized and barely-participative recommendations that increased the dissonance among the target population (framework of priorities and exigency), the methodological tools and program proposals (political framework) and the degree of plausibility and/or success of these programs’ objectives (Aparicio, 2007a, p. 136).

If we consider the impact of policies aimed at aiding the transitions of young people (in education and employment) in this particular period, we may conclude that they could not meet two basic objectives:

• Diminish the uncertainty, lack of coordination, and defenselessness engendered by the new work processes of exclusion in a context of crisis, economic deceleration, and the exacerbation of the logic of the market as the only reference for social development, thus impairing the socioeducational priorities (Sirvent and Llosa, 1998);
• Address the social trends and logics that induce unequal distribution of educational benefits of education: specifically, the capital and culture socialized through professional training, the formal education system and other avenues of non-formal training (Rodriguez, 2002).2

In this context, and despite the failures of the past, educational policy is still called upon to play a role in transforming the lives of young people, not only to shed light on the complexity of the most pressing social, occupational and economic problems, but also to build strategies and programs and provide socioeducational training opportunities with the power to bring about change (UNESCO, 2001). That is, it is absolutely essential to abandon the assistentialist and fragmentary character that distinguished the forms of state socioeducational involvement in the 90s, and to try out criteria and actions that take the risk of empowerment, and not only that of the young players and their social environment.

Consistent with this diagnosis and because of the dizzying rise in unemployment and the informality of work, Neff, Battistini Panigo and Perez (1999), postulate that these problems affected:

…the various social groups heterogeneously, hitting the poorest hardest —those whose long-term employment rate increased between 1988 and 1997, rising from 0.6% to 5.2%. By contrast, in the highest stratum, the relevant rate rose only 0.2% to 1.3% on the same dates (p. 64).

Thus, the step from productivity to occupational non-productivity obviously must be assumed in the first place, to be a structural condition of the productive market, and the second, as a direct consequence of the invasion of flexibilization, liberalization and privatization policies implemented in the labor market, and that in Argentina were strongly associated with insecurity and lack of social protection (Sage, 2002).

The significant lack of genuinely productive jobs became established in this particular period as a condition inherent in the job market, so that "only 3 out of every 10 jobs created in the decade can be included in this category; their share of total employment fell from 46.4% in 1990 to 42.4% in 1998 (Filmus, Kaplan and Moragues, 2001, p. 51).

As we well know, job stability is a sine qua non for achieving higher incomes and access to decent contract conditions, as well as for obtaining satisfactory levels of social protection and participation in certain basic social services and goods. Thus for example, under flexibilization of labor, contract patterns changed, becoming more individualistic, time-related and dynamic (ILO, 2005). The changes in this regard were concentrated mainly on the work hours, the grounds for dismissal, assignment and social coverage of workers, and the rights and obligations of both employees and employers, etc.

The impact of the vulnerability, segregation and inequality recorded in the Argentine labor market between 1998 and 2001 contributed to deteriorating living conditions and production, and also led to the failure of educational and employment transitions of young people. In this perspective Filmus et al. (2001) state that:

Informal labor increased at a greater annual rate than the overall employment (3.9%). Therefore, 6 of every 10 new jobs generated in the 90s were created by this sector, which meant that its share in the total number of those employed increased from 44.4% in 1990 to 47.9% in 1998. (p. 49).

Blame for the advance of the economy’s informal sector was laid on the collapse of a productive and employment model based on free will, autonomous dynamism, and on the State’s lack of comprehension. Contrary to the optimistic forecasts cherished by the political and technocratic class, as well as by the economic sector, the fall of the modern sector of the economy, according to the study mentioned above, was reflected in the diminution of employment in this area from 55.6 % in 1990 to 52.1% in 1999.

The new economic model linked to the principles of a free market economy seems to have developed a fatal but effective strategy for evading the provision of social guarantees and refusing to assume legal and political commitments when recruiting the new labor force. Then, disdaining guidelines for control, regulation and external modulation that could alter the principles of liberalization and flexibilization of productive activities, it appealed to the control of an objective, self-regulating and connecting economic force, as the only valid rationale by which to achieve the success of productive activities, and to overcome the disfunctional aspects that plagued the productive employment system.

This unidirectional and simplistic logic undoubtedly represented the paradigmatic implementation of an economy out of control, disconnected from society and refusing to assume the long-term human cost of such profound transformations (Neffa et al., 1999).

The precarious state of the labor market in the case of Argentina was compounded with the unequal distribution of income, wealth and social benefits. With equal force, it tended to strengthen the differences between social groups. This simultaneously strengthened the meritocratic assignment of jobs and the unequal distribution of social opportunities in order to objectify work trajectories and biographical projects.

Unemployment in the context of Argentina mainly affected young people exposed to conditions of poverty, social insecurity and economic risk. The majority of the unemployed, therefore, represented an itinerant, mobile, and vacant superpopulation , whose struggle for admission to the production system had a destabilizing impact on wage levels, union representation mechanisms and observance of the social and labor rights of those involved in the production chain (Monza, 1998, Aparicio, 2006).

In this scenario, young people feel trapped at the in the middle of the socioeconomic inequality running through the multiple contexts of their lives, and restricts their ability to organize their own paths and biographical transitions from the education system to the labor market. Consequently, uncertainty becomes a norm, instability a constant, and the search for channels of participation in the labor market and in social life seems to find no echo among the more important political and institutional measures in the field of education and employment ( Zaffaroni, 2006; Sirvent, 1999).

The vulnerability of the young is a cumulative, long-term, structural problem that affects at least two generations, to be precise, today's youth and the youth of tomorrow. Over the past 30 years the deliberate absence of an inclusive social model with a capacity for inclusion and historic viability has made young people its principal victims. With such a critical focus, Zaffaroni (2007) notes that among the young:

In Argentina today, the sense of the future is altered, and is no longer the image of progress, where everything is on the way. Instead, it is changing into the chance/accidental, the random, where everything begins to look unsafe and ephemeral.

This sensation of insecurity linked to social unrest to massive unemployment, to the loss of identity, to uncertainty about the future, leads to an perplexed and bewildered ”Who am I?” “How do I relate with others?” “What am I gonna do?” This uncertainty causes a breakdown of collective projects and performances, in terms of social organization, education, work, the affect, the possibility of the future (pp.50-51).

The analysis of the various fields of social inclusion and participation of young people is a task urgently needed for grasping the complexity of the scenarios and processes of educational and employment transition; then for developing strategies for political involvement consistent with the diversity and specificity of their demands, and coming to an agreement with youth on the subject of political intervention tools (programs, projects, institutional arrangements, pacts, laws, etc.).

In relation to this, proposals are needed for socioeducational training that will be effective in accompanying the transition of young people, and in building up their competencies, arrangements and social capital for addressing the changes generated within the labor market and social life.

In addition, proposals are needed for making intelligible the new forms of collective behavioral organization, and for providing a critical approach to the dynamics and interchanges conceived and developed among the various social fields of life, and for fighting the tendencies of socioeconomic exclusion that prevail at a local and global level. These are the icons impossible to delegate, and which guide future action in young people’s political environment.

The consequences of the paradigmatic transformation of the State as universal comptroller and compensator of social inequalities took on a deadly dimension, which, in the end, damaged the social fabric and dismantled the strategic spaces and mechanisms for social political involvement. After the structural reforms were introduced, the state social position of "arbitrator guarantor" was created, ready to intervene only in specific situations, and where it was essential, without attempting to follow the trends and the guidelines of an overvalued market, adhering to the interests of the economic, productive and entrepreneurial class.

Regarding these conditions, the post-social Argentine state —as some experts assert— was a victim of its own cuts and amputations, in trying and not being able, a posteriori, to accomplish the promotion of actions and policies capable of resolving the contradictions inherent in the prevailing economic, labor, social and educational environment which promised the objective possibilities of social participation by new generations.

In the political educational environment it is necessary to assume that young people and their trajectories of inclusion constitute in themselves a fundamental issue to address. For this reason, the specificity of their characters still requires a more systematic and contextual approach that will optimize the efforts undertaken in the field of educational training by the state, civil society, and industry representatives.

The approximation critical to the realities experienced by young people could significantly further a broadening of the theoretical and practical horizons of the socioeducational work done in this specific social area. Similarly, the generation of a space for reflection and debate that would anticipate increasing the involvement of young people in the socioeducational actions, can favor the effectiveness of public investment in that sector, while simultaneously increasing the democratic and participative foundation for their advent in political and institutional life.

As to the naturalness of how the problems and social contradictions are assumed in the environment of training young people, these constitute the beginning of every alternative for success. That is our challenge; therein too, lies the historical significance of that challenge. Based on this idea-force, the policies and programs for the promotion of the employment insertion of youth —sporadic efforts, barely contextualized in the past— require new theoretical and conceptual options that promote the perception of the heterogeneous, changeable and inequitable reality in which young people live today.

Young people who have a low educational level, prevented access to elementary material and symbolic goods with which to participate fully in social, political and cultural life, tend to be more prone to falling into poverty and insecure employment. This trend at present has not changed by any means, although it is recognized that its deadly consequences have are more apt to be stirred up and weighed through corrective actions undertaken by the state.

In a context where the low profile of educational offerings —formal and informal— is outstanding, and the political mechanisms of promotion seem to succumb to fragmentation and senselessness, it is necessary to move forward in the creation of political and institutional mechanisms that can support the integration and the socioeducational participation of young people in a manner that will inspire their trust.

For this reason, and in conclusion, we will show that the same emphasis should be given to working on reorienting the political and social educational actions, trying to optimize the coordination of local actions as well as contextualizing the contribution of public investments —at a professional, institutional, and programming level—, according to the bona fide pleas of young people. Reinforcement (in the sense of empowerment) of young people’s participation can exemplify an effective way to reconfigure the structures, logic and practices of social segregation now entrenched in the educational system and the labor market.

Translator: Lessie Evona York-Weatherman
UABC Mexicali

Comisión Económica para América Latina y El Caribe. (2000). Juventud, población y desarrollo en América Latina y el Caribe. Síntesis y conclusiones. Santiago de Chile: Author.

Comisión Económica para América Latina y El Caribe. (2001). Protagonismo juvenil en proyectos locales. Lecciones del Cono Sur. Santiago de Chile: Author.

Comisión Económica para América Latina y El Caribe & UNESCO, OREALC. (1992). Educación y conocimiento: Eje de la transformación productiva con equidad. Santiago de Chile: Author.

Filmus, D. (1999). Estado, sociedad y educación en la Argentina de fin de siglo. Buenos Aires: Troquel.

Filmus, D., Kaplan, C., & Moragues, M. (2001). Cada de más, necesaria, cada vez más insuficiente. Escuela media y mercado de trabajo en épocas de globalización. Buenos Aires: Santillana.

Fitoussi, J. P. & Rosenvallon, P. (1997). La nueva era de las desigualdades. Buenos Aires: Manantial.

Gallart, M. A. (1999). Estudio Nacional Argentino. Proyecto regional “Políticas y programas de capacitación para jóvenes en situación de pobreza y riesgo de exclusión”. Manuscrito no publicado, CENEP, Buenos Aires.

Gallart, M. A. (Coord.). (2000a). Formación, pobreza y exclusión. Montevideo, Uruguay: CINTERFOR-OIT.

Gallart, M. A. (2000b). Veinte años de educación y trabajo. Montevideo, Uruguay: CINTERFOR-OIT.

Gorz, A. (1989). Kritik der ökonomischen Vernunft. Sinnfragen am Ender der Arbeitsgesellschaft. Berlín: Rotbuch Verlag.

Gorz, A. (2000). Arbeit zwischen Misere und Utopie. München: Suhrkamp.

Grunwald, K. & Thiersch, H. (Eds.). (2004). Praxis Lebensweltorientierter Sozialer Arbeit. Handlungszugaenge und Methoden in unterschiedlichen Arbeitsfeldern. Weinheim/München: Juventa Verlag.

Jacinto, C. (1999). Programas de educación para jóvenes desfavorecidos: Enfoques y tendencias en América Latina. París: IIPE-UNESCO.

Jacinto, C. (2001). Contextos y actores sociales en la evaluación de los programas de capacitación de jóvenes. In E. Pieck (oord.). Los jóvenes y. el trabajo. La educación frente a la exclusión social (pp. 251-268). México: Universidad Iberoamericana.

Jacinto, C., Lasida, J., Ruétalo, J., & Berrutti, E. (1998). Formación para el trabajo con jóvenes de sectores de pobreza en América Latina. ¿Qué desafíos y qué estrategias? In C. Jacinto & M. A. Gallart (Comp.), Por una segunda oportunidad. La formación para el trabajo de jóvenes vulnerables (pp. 7-34). Montevideo, Uruguay: CINTERFOR-OIT-RET.

Krauskopf, D. (2004). La construcción de políticas de juventud en América Latina. Retrieved March 17, 2008, from: http://www.gobernabilidad.cl/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=453

Mancebo, M. (1998). La sociedad Argentina de los ‘90: crisis de socialización. In D. Filmus (1999), Los noventa. Política, sociedad y cultura en América latina y Argentina de fin de siglo (pp.177- 200). Buenos Aires: EUDEBA.

Margulis, M. & Urresti, M. (Eds.). (1996). La juventud es más que una palabra. Buenos Aires: Biblos.

Margulis, M. & Urresti, M. (Eds.). (1997). La cultura en la Argentina de fin de siglo. Ensayos sobre la dimensión cultural. Buenos Aires: Oficina de Publicaciones del CBC, UBA.

Minujín, A. (1998). ¿La gran exclusión?. Vulnerabilidad y exclusión en América Latina. In A. Isuani & D. Filmus (Comps.), La Argentina que viene (pp.53-78). Buenos Aires: UNICEF-FLACSO-NORMA.

Minujín, A. (1998b). Vulnerabilidad y exclusión en América Latina. In E. Bustelo, E. & A. Minujín (Eds.), Todos entran. Propuestas para sociedades incluyentes (pp.161-205). Bogotá, Colombia: UNICEF.

Monza, A. (1998). La crisis del empleo en la Argentina de los 90. In A. Isuani & D. Filmus (Comps.), La Argentina que viene (pp. 223-261). Buenos Aires: UNICEF-FLACSO-NORMA.

Neffa, J. L., Battistini, O., Panigo, D. & Pérez, P. E. (1999). Exclusión social en el mercado del trabajo. El caso de Argentina. Santiago de Chile: OIT-Fundación Ford.

O´Donnell, G. (2001). La irrenunciabilidad del Estado de derecho. Instituciones y Desarrollo, 8-9, 43-82.

Organización Internacional del Trabajo. (2001). Panorama Laboral 2001. Lima, Perú: Author.

Organización Internacional del Trabajo. (2002). Panorama Laboral 2002. Lima, Perú: Author.

Organización Internacional del Trabajo. (2004). Tendencias mundiales del empleo juvenil. Ginebra: Author.

Organización Internacional del Trabajo. (2005). El empleo de los jóvenes: Vías para acceder a un trabajo decente (VI Rep., Conferencia Internacional del Trabajo No. 93). Ginebra: Autor. Retrieved March 24, 2008, from: http://www.oit.org/public/spanish/standards/relm/ilc/ilc93/pdf/rep-vi.pdf

Puiggrós, A. (Comp.). (1999). En los límites de la educación. Buenos Aires: Homo Sapiens Ediciones.

Riquelme, G. (2004). La educación secundaria antes y después de la reforma. Buenos Aires: Miño & Dávila Editores.

Rodríguez, E. (2002). Documento de base. Insumos iniciales para el diseño del Libro Blanco sobre políticas de juventud en Iberoamérica [Document for Secretaría General de la Organización Iberoamericana de Juventud (OIJ) como Documento de Base]. Montevideo, Uruguay: CINTERFOR-OIT.

Salvia, A. (2002). La estructura social del trabajo en argentina: desempleo, subempleo y precariedad laboral [Research Rep. AE/Notas/SL01]. Buenos Aires: Universidad Católica Argentina, Área Económica, Departamento de Investigación Institucional.

Salvia, A. & Miranda, A. (1999). Norte de nada. Los jóvenes y la exclusión en la década de los ’90. Realidad Económica, 165, 110-123.

Salvia, A. & Tuñón, I. (2002). Los jóvenes trabajadores frente a la educación, el Desempleo y el deterioro social en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.

Sirvent, M. T. (1999). The potential, actual and social demand for adult learning in Argentina: the situation of educational risk cumulative advantage. In M. Singh (Ed.), Adult learning and the future of work (pp.143-168). Hamburgo: UNESCO.

Sirvent, M. T. (2000). La función política y social de la educación. Los valores frente al neoliberalismo. Revista Voces, 7, 42-49.

Sirvent, M. T. & Llosa, S (1998). Jóvenes y adultos en situación de riesgo educativo: análisis de la demanda potencial y efectiva. Revista del Instituto de Investigaciones en Ciencias de la Educación, 12, 12-27.

Sottoli, S. (1999). Sozialpolitik und entwicklungspolitischer Wandel in Lateinamerika. Konzepte und Reformen in Vergleich. Opladen: Leske + Budrich.

Tedesco, J. C. (2004). Desafíos de la educación secundaria en América Latina. In C. Jacinto (Coord.), ¿Educar para qué trabajo?. Discutiendo rumbos en América Latina (pp.325-334). Buenos Aires: La Crujía-Ministerio de Educación, Ciencia y Tecnología-Ministerio de Trabajo Empleo y Seguridad Social-RedEtis.

Tedesco J. C. & López, N. (2001). Algunos dilemas de la educación secundaria en América Latina. Buenos Aires: IIPE-UNESCO.

Thiersch, H. (2002). Positionsbestimmungen der Sozialen Arbeit. Gesellschaftspolitik, Theorie und Ausbildung. Weinheim/ München: Juventa Verlag.

Tokman, V. E. (2003). Desempleo juvenil en el Cono Sur. Santiago de Chile: Fundación Friedrich Ebert.

UNESCO (2001). El futuro de la educación en América Latina y el Caribe. Santiago de Chile: UNESCO-OREALC.

Zaffaroni, A. (Comp.). (2005). Jóvenes protagonistas Salta 2004. Salta: Milord.

Zaffaroni, A. (2006). Representaciones y propuestas sobre educación de jóvenes salteños. In A. Zaffaroni (Comp.), Ámbitos del protagonismo juvenil (pp. 207-217). Salta: Editorial Milord.

Zaffaroni, A. (2007). Jóvenes en comparsa. Los jóvenes participantes de las organizaciones de carnaval salteño (OCS). En A. Zaffaroni (Comp.), Fronteras en la vida de los jóvenes (pp.46-59). Salta, Argentina: Milord.

3Due to the prevailing socio-economic status among the young, Monza (1998, p. 228) comments that these are people who "share the greatest level of adaptability and consent to the criteria of insecurity, systematic deterioration, passive adaptation and flexibility which rule and review the tendencies of today’s labor market in Argentina."