Not in Education, Employment or Training : Das "NEET-Problem" : Ansichten eines Gesellschaftsphänomens

Not in Education, Employment or Training: Japan’s »NEET-Question« Views of a social phenomenon

Nowadays, the prolonged and challenging period of adolescence is often perceived as a problem. In Japan, a country previously known for it’s smooth transitions from school to work, the introduction of the term »NEET« caused massive discussions leading to a sense of crisis. NEET, a term with origins in Great Britain, stands for young people at the age of 15 to 34 who are »Not in Education, Employment or Training« and thus are not directly integrated into the working or academic world.
In this paper, Japanese NEET are characterized using respective statistics and an analysis of the »risk-groups« in terms of age, education and family background. The problem hereby is the lack of a clear differentiation between NEET and other social phenomena like Parasite Single or hikikomori and the absence of a standard definition. The analysis of the outcome of similar youth related discussions questioning the »truth” of the problem, as well as the impressions of NEET from Japanese students further underline that youth are more than just »NEET-Reservists.«
The paper shows that in 2002 there was indeed a NEET increase, but their share never passed over two percent of the respective age groups. A decline in the number of NEET in 2006 further reveals that there is no real statistical proof for the overblown awareness of their existence. Thus, it seems necessary to lift the discussion from an emotional to a more scientific base, in order to allow a smoother integration of youth into today’s society.