Youth in Industrial Regions – Strengthening institutional capacities to cope with the outmigration of young people from industrial towns
Principal Investigator at ZRC SAZU
Asst. Prof. Jani Kozina, PhD-
Original Title
Mladi v industrijskih regijah – Krepitev institucionalnih zmogljivosti za preprečevanje izseljevanja mladih iz industrijskih mest
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Acronym
YOUIND
Project Team
David Bole, PhD, Jernej Tiran, PhD, Marko Senčar Mrdaković-
Duration
1 April 2020–31 March 2022 -
Lead Partner
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Project Leader
Judith Pizzera, Ph.D.
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Financial Source
Interreg Slovenija - Avstrija
ARRS - Javna agencija za raziskovalno dejavnost
Partners
Občina Idrija, Verein Steirische Eisenstrasse , University of Graz, Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
YOUIND deals with the issue of youth outmigration from peripheral industrial towns and regions from an industrial-cultural perspective.
The SI-AT programme area is characterized by a relatively large number of industrial enterprises, which are often located in small and medium-sized towns. These places are facing new challenges, as new trends (e.g. Industry 4.0), increasingly demand for new, highly skilled workers. These employees are difficult to find, as especially younger people do not see these regions as attractive and leave, rarely to return. These developments do not only threaten industry, but also the socio-economic development of entire regions within the programme area.
To address this largely neglected issue, the YOUIND partnership combines academic and regional knowledge to raise institutional capacities. Both partner regions - Idrija and the Steirische Eisenstrasse - are rich in their industrial past and present, with both of them being on the UNESCO's heritage list and are today sites of global companies such as Kolektor and Voestalpine. The project seeks to use this specific industrial culture of place as a potential for strengthening the institutional capacity on youth outmigration in order to link young people closer to their region.
YOUIND raises awareness on the topic via:
- Fostering crossborder knowledge exchange between stakeholders and developing long-term network structures in the regions, involving youth, business and institutional actors
- Developing jointly highly visible pilot activities on youth and industrial culture
- Long-term reg. action-plans and transnat. strategic advice
The aim is to promote social innovation and improve institutional capacities through pilot actions and long-term action planning. The partnership also intends to translate project findings to transnational policy recommendations, distributing knowledge on emerging topic within the programme area.
WP1: Institutional capacity building on the topic of youth outmigration
Work package 1 will ensure and foster knowledge exchange on coping with youth outmigration in industrial towns and regions. The aim here is to raise awareness for the topic and increase regional capacities to act via an intensive knowledge exchange between the regions of Idrija and Steirische Eisenstrasse and relevant regional stakeholders.
WP2: Pilot actions in regard to youth outmigration and industrial culture
Work package 2 will ensure the joint preparation and implementation of 2 pilot actions (festival of industrial culture and school initiative), fostering social and institutional innovation via knowledge exchange within industrial regions on the topic of youth outmigration. The main aim is to show-case the (positive) relations between the regions and industry to a wider public, increasing outreach to other target groups and aiming for a change in perception of industrial regions and triggering a process of social innovation. Additionally, the pilot actions will serve to strengthen involvement of the regional stakeholder networks by conceptually supporting the pilots - thereby increasing regional capacities to act.
WP3: Long-term regional action planning and cross-border strategies
Based on the gained insights from the previous WPs, the partnership will derive the concluding project results - first, politically underwritten regional action plans. These two documents (1 by each region) will reflect on the project achievements and mapping out future activities in this field. This will be done in tight connection to the regional actor's networks, thereby creating new capacities in the regions, also advocating for a continuation of the network beyond the project life-time. In a second part of the WP, the results will be used to raise awareness to the topic of youth outmigration in industrial towns via a transnational strategy paper, addressing specifically policy-makers from similar local and regional contexts within and outside the programme area Slovenia-Austria. These results will be translated into policy recommendations on the topic of youth outmigration in industrial towns and regions.
- Input paper: Good practices on youth outmigration
This document provides a scientific background on the topic of youth outmigration from industrial towns and regions. The empirical work encompassed a systematic review of 20 peer-reviewed articles dealing with youth challenges in industrial urban and regional settings. The focus was on eight thematic priorities, identified on the basis of international youth and industrial strategies. The results revealed that youth challenges are quite under researched in a context of industrial towns and regions and most of the selected case studies are strongly concentrated in the Anglosphere, with some exceptions from Nordic context and post-socialist Eastern Europe.
- Policy analysis: Youth outmigration from industrial towns
This document explores the issue of youth outmigration and demographic change in the context of industrial small and medium-sized towns in Central Europe. It maps out the general status of research in this field, highlighting an existing knowledge gap. The text also analyses two case studies from Slovenia and Austria, the town of Idrija and the region Steirische Eisenstrasse. It investigates demographic development processes with a focus on youth, as well as policy responses and governance aspects.
- Cross-border strategy: Youth outmigration and industrial culture
By analysing eight specific challenges of young people in small and medium-sized industrial towns, this strategy provides a multidimensional picture of the various desires and values of the youth in industrial settings. Based on these, a concrete and targeted policy brief is provided to aid local and regional stakeholders.
- Catalogue of good practices: Engaging young people in industrial towns (in Slovene with English summary)
The aim of the catalogue of good practices is to present successful examples of youth engagement in the context of industrial urban life. The selected good practises show different ways to improve the quality of the urban environment and motivate young people to live, work, and have fun in a town with a predominantly industrial character.
- Good Practice Katalog: Einbindung junger Menschen in Industriestädten (in German with English summary)