This is the report on the situation in the Netherlands in the field of youth, young homeless people and unaccompanied minor aliens. The report describes risk factors for children and young people in relation to social exclusion and homelessness. This report forms the first part of the international comparative study ‘CSEYHP’. MOVISIE carries out this three-year study by order of the European Union. The cooperative partners are three universities in: England, the Czech Republic and Portugal. The objectives of ‘Combating Youth Homelessness’ are as follows: 1. to understand the life trajectories of different homeless youth populations in different national contexts; 2. to develop the concepts of risk and social exclusion in relation to the experience of young homeless people and to the reinsertion process; 3. to test how different methods of working contribute to the reinsertion process for young people; 4. to investigate the roles of and relationships between the young person, trusted adults, lead professionals, peer mentors and family members in the delivery of these programmes across all four countries. When preparing the national reports, the three partner countries the Czech Republic, England and Portugal use the same format as used in the Dutch report. Based on the four national reports, England will prepare a comparative report, in which the four national situations will be compared.
With employer branding (EB), businesses aim to align their organizational norms with the norms of their current and prospective employees, and they explicitly communicate about the firm’s norms. Communication, however, carries different meanings depending on the context in which one operates. Also, the organizational norms may vary depending on the context, i.e., industry, different countries, and geographical context in which a firm operates. As such, the process of EB may be context-dependent, too. This study explores if and how EB is applied differently in different country and industry contexts. The analysis draws on a quantitative content analysis of 226 job vacancies targeted at highly educated graduates and professionals in IT, energy, and healthcare from the North of the Netherlands and comparable regions from Germany and Bulgaria. Our findings show that EB, as manifested in core values and distinctive characteristics, is not widely adopted in the vacancies we included in our analysis. When adopted, different values are emphasized depending on the context. General information and job-specific information are most frequent among all industries and countries. EB is a multidimensional concept with different dimensions used according to the context. The study’s main implication is that companies need to be mindful of the context in which an EB strategy is used. A one-size-fits-all approach in EB is likely not the most effective. This is particularly relevant for multinationals that adopt a worldwide organizational brand.
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This article investigates the aesthetic advice posted by temporary employment agencies on their websites. These agencies organise a substantial part of the Dutch labour market and they are known to apply exclusionary practices in their strategies of recruitment and selection in order to meet employers’ preferences. This article sheds light on (1) the content of the advice; (2) how it legitimises the importance of aesthetics for finding work; and (3) in what ways the advice serves the purposes of the agencies. An in-depth content analysis illustrates how the advice has the potential to reproduce exclusions, thus helping employment agencies adhere to employers’ exclusionary requests. Creating online content that generates traffic to the websites in this case causes a circular logic in which the importance of aesthetics is self-reinforcing. The study illustrates that the seemingly neutral and empty advice posted on websites may enforce exclusions in the temporary work labour market.
