Big data for youth policy

The Centre for BOLD Cities has received funding from the Dutch National Research Agenda (NWA) for the research project ‘Big data for youth policy’. The project revolves around the possible use of big, open and linked data for determining how to recover ‘invisible youth’, i.e. unemployed, unregistered young people that are not enrolled in an education programme.

According to Statistics Netherlands (CBS), there are currently around 66.000 invisible young people in the Netherlands. These young people form a vulnerable group, prone to increasing social disadvantages, possible mental issues and the risk of criminalisation or radicalisation. The lack of official registration significantly hampers the opportunity of guiding the ‘invisible young’ in social, economic and cultural participation.

Members of the interdisciplinary research team focus on analysing the (online) places where these invisible young, or NEETs ('not in education, employment or training') identify as such, and aim to inform urban policy based on these findings.

In this project, the Centre for BOLD Cities' research team will cooperate with the Knowledge Lab Urban Big Data, the Knowledge Lab Urban Labour Market, the municipality of Rotterdam and representatives of the G4 (cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht).