The NEET economy. Economic and moral practices among vulnerable young people

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the NEET phenomenon has been the focus of international attention among researchers and politicians. And yet, despite extensive research into these young people, little is known today about their daily economic and moral activities. The present article addresses this knowledge gap by examining NEETs’ daily economic practices and their normative modalities. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach in Switzerland, it demonstrates that NEETs are not economically inactive, but rather engage in a wide range of circuits of commerce which include various actors, objects and services. Furthermore, it highlights that their economic activities are not anomic but governed by social and moral conventions based on the values of love, friendship, cooperation, solidarity and compassion. Consequently, the main contribution of the article is to challenge the stigmatizing public stereotypes of these young people as inactive and immoral by shedding light on their economic agency and their economic and moral rationality. Finally, based on these empirical findings, our article invites researchers to embrace a theoretical paradigm shift, namely, to cease conceptualizing NEETs as entrepreneurial selves according to a homo economicus model, and instead to conceptualize them as fully fledged socio-economic and moral actors within a homo socialis and moralis model.