1.1. Youth Challenges
The youths (or adolescents) are one sixth of the world population (World Health Organization, 2017b). Globally, 21st Century youth commonly suffer from low motivation, lack of life goals, intense competition, low self-esteem, juvenile delinquency, and limited upward mobility. According to the World Health Organization (2017a), several concerns on major health issues related to youth such as mental health, alcohol and drugs, tobacco use, and early pregnancy and childbirth, have also been addressed.
1.1.1. The Larger Socio-Economic Context of Youths in Hong Kong
The wellbeing, prospects and views of the young people in Hong Kong have been the concerns of policymakers, social service providers and the young people themselves in the past two decades since the transfer of Hong Kong’s sovereignty from Britain to China in 1997. Hong Kong has undergone a poignant economic restructuring in which the upward social mobility of less well-off groups is stagnated in growing competition in education and employment. Ever since the outbreak of the Umbrella Movement in 2014, problems related to youths have drawn more attention from the public. Some people blamed the insufficiency of youth work for causing the outbreak of this largest popular political movement in Hong Kong’s history, and suggested to allocate more resources to them (Wong et al., 2016). This section will explore the whole picture of Hong Kong youths in the challenges and uncertainties for the Hong Kong youths in the aspects of inequality in education, and unfavorable employment situations.
1.1.2. Educational Inequalities
The key concern of educational inequality in Hong Kong is the intergenerational transmission of economic and cultural disadvantages from parents to their children, which have been proven by previous studies on differences between families with more access to economic and cultural resources and families with limited access. For example, Ip (2014) found that in 2001 and 2011, the positive impact of family economic and cultural resources was significant on the enrollment of young people in both local and overseas university degree programmes. Young people whose parents have lower income and educational attainment were found to have fewer opportunities in receiving university education than their counterparts whose parents were of higher income and educational attainment. The youths of parents with lower income and educational attainment tend to face higher levels of inequality and more disadvantages. Chiu and Lee (2016) pointed out that family socioeconomic status could make difference to how well they could achieve in that subject. In the long run, the government should adequately increase the number of subsidized university spaces to enable more Hong Kong youths to attain university education, and to lower their burdens in educational expenses, especially for those youths from grassroots families (Ip & Chiu, 2016).
1.1.3. Unfavorable Employment Situations of the Youths in Hong Kong
Over the decade or so, the youths in Hong Kong have been suffering from low wages, limited choices in the job market, and working poverty in 2014, the unemployment rates for the age 15-19 and 20-24 cohorts were two to three times higher than the overall unemployment rate of Hong Kong. At the same time, the wage level for the 15-19 cohort dropped in 2013. These have revealed that the wage level of young people is continuously under pressure in the job market, and that will affect their ability to become economically independent (HKFYG, 2015). In fact, Hong Kong’s economy has been improving in recent years, but young people are still encountering a lot of hindrances in job seeking and workplaces. However, Yu and Zhong (2012) pointed out several flaws associated with Hong Kong’s workfare and employment support programmes that might not tackle youths’ needs and challenges. They found that many youth participants of the schemes could not earn enough to support a reasonable standard of living, that could bring them into the scenario of “working poverty”. Accordingly, they would lose interest in working under the workfare schemes and re-enter the social security net. These workfare schemes supposedly introduced to empower the youth would thus become ineffective. Moreover, these schemes had encouraged employers to only hire participants of the workfare schemes rather than making more positions available to create a long-term and sustainable working environment for young people in need (Yu & Zhong, 2012). The government thus has an unshrinkable responsibility in formulating a better policy to facilitate youth’s career development and life planning (Ip & Chiu, 2016).
Generally speaking, the review of literature reveals that the education and social service sectors in Hong Kong have been working hard in setting up intervention programmes and measures to tackle the difficulties that young people are facing in different aspects aiming to equip and empower them to be more confident on the way to face future challenges and developmental needs. The government fails to connect these youths and the labour market and match them with the fields and positions that are suitable to them. Also, many of these youth interns are not well trained or well treated by employers. The following section briefly describes the efforts of different approaches that have been implemented to support the youths in facing the challenges.