Youth Goal #6 : Moving Rural Youth Forward

Today we want to share an interesting article by Anna Lodeserto in which she analyses deeply one of the goals on the European Youth Strategy 2019-2027: the Youth Goal #6 “Moving rural youth forward”.

Here an extract from the article:

In Europe, rural society continues to play an important role. This is especially relevant when it comes to life decisions made by young people and their transitions to adulthood. In the last few decades, parallel to the process of European economic and political integration, traditional rural habits, arts and crafts have been revitalised out of a need to preserve and enhance regional specificities. Although in many cases this has turned into regressive and exclusionary nationalist approaches, and even authoritarian populism.

The natural receivers and transmitters of this ambivalent heritage, the rural youth, have become an increasingly rare added value. In most rural regions, the number of young people has decreased. This is a consequence of the negative trends in demographic growth, and of the massive abandonment of the countryside, especially by the working-age population. The current situation of EU rural areas receives the influece of a variety of causes related to social, economic, cultural, demographic, geographic and environmental conditions, which have contributed to increased disparities in the living standards of young people who chose not to emigrate or who decided to settle in rural areas coming from different backgrounds.

Even in various parts of Europe, youth transitions are still different, as they also are in rural and urban areas, and they differ according to social background, ethnicity, culture, religion, gender, social, economic and many other circumstances.

In this context, one of the Youth Goals of the EU Youth Strategy 2019-2027 paves the way for further developments on this issue, so it is well worth analysing the rationale behind it.

Read the complete article “Moving rural youth forward -The light shed by the Youth Goal”!

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