Maria-Carmen Pantea

• MA (CEU), MSc (Oxford) PhD (BBU)
• Professor at Babeș-Bolyai University

This article explores the subjective experiences of transition to employment in the outsourced/offshored business service sector in Romania. Based on 138 interviews with junior and senior graduates, it maps how different ‘tidal economic waves’ associated with Romania’s economic transition have intersected working biographies since the 1990s. The pa...

This chapter concludes the book. It presents the main insights addressed and opens up the analysis of the knowledge economy towards emerging dilemmas. It summarises the main arguments, which were related to graduate career paths, the shifting and contradictory roles of higher education, and the internal hierarchies that shape employment, including...

Europe has the most educated generation in its history, yet an alarming number of graduates are overqualified. This paper explores the intersection between education and work from the perspectives of those involved in a sector that is prone to overqualification: the call centres of Romania’s thriving business service sector. Based on over 100 in-de...

Call for book chapters: Graduates’ work in the knowledge economy (with Palgrave) We are pleased to invite you to contribute to an edited book on Graduates’ work in the knowledge economy. The volume aims to advance the understanding of graduate careers in the 'knowledge economy.' It uses sociological, economic, and political lenses to examine the s...

This paper aims to demonstrate the analytical potential of initial vocational education and training (iVET) in the debate on the costs of social mobility. It is based on extensive qualitative fieldwork with over 250 young people in Romania’s iVET (around 20% of whom were Roma). Central to the discourses of young Roma are the experiences of discrimi...

Initial vocational education and training (VET) has been intensely reformed in Romania. Elevating its status has been a recent concern, in the context of strong pressure from industry. However, it requires more than an ‘image makeover’ and the persuading of parents and young people. This analysis is based on a qualitative study, involving over 250...

This chapter is based on qualitative research conducted with over 250 young people aged 16–18 years in Romania’s initial vocational education and training (VET) system. The fieldwork used a bottom-up approach (see Powell, A critical assessment of research on South African FET colleges. South African Review of Education, 19(1), 59–81, 2), starting t...

This research explores the significance of higher education among 53 young people from Romania who received prizes in technical competitions, mainly for innovations in robotics and IT. Findings suggest they held strong views on higher education. For some, the conventional roles of university were still, pertinent. However, opting out university or...

Vocational education and training (VET) is high on the European agenda. This article adds nuance to the policy ambition of “fixing” parents’ views on VET. It is based on extensive qualitative research in Romania, with over 250 young people. An unanticipated finding was the “absence” of parents from the young people’s accounts, along with a tendency...

Since 1978, the management of the floating population has become a big challenge for China. Dongguan, one of the major migrant cities, is widely considered a reference city, as it was the first to professionally manage migration, and it has a more permissive policy. This research chooses Dongguan as a case study for exploring the perspectives of th...

The book critically examines young people’s relationships with the world of work, public policies that address youth employment and entrepreneurship, and the contribution of youth work in this process.

Vocational education and training (VET) is linked to many social and economic goals. Yet despite the high policy ambitions, it often remains a sector with a low(er) social standing. This paper is based on empirical data collected through interviews and focus groups with over 250 young women and men aged 16–18 in 34 VET schools in Romania. It aims t...

This chapter presents the (theoretical and practical) rationales for carrying out the research, largely related to the ‘invisible’ research status of the young people in VET and in Romania, as well as the economistic base for policy making on VET. It develops on the main research goal: to explore how young people in Romania’s VET position themselve...

This chapter argues that young people in VET feel strongly about enduring views of work. Their normative aspirations are grouped in three large areas that make the chapter’s three subheadings: (i) the quest for craftsmanship; (ii) the belief in hard work and need for predictability; (iii) the quest for validation and progression. The chapter argues...

This chapter defines initial VET as the secondary education preparing young people for level 3 occupations. It describes three main approaches of organizing VET across Europe (cf. Wieland, Local Econ 30(5):577–583, 2015): (i) the liberal, market-based model where the supply and demand of un-standardized training is given by the market (UK, Ireland)...

This chapter deals with young people’s apprehension that their expectations may prove volatile, if not erroneous, and their deep realization that the actual prospects that unfold are more constraining than enabling. It presents as ‘low expectations’ a rather deeply held, tacit, hard-to-unpack set of anxieties. Ultimately, the chapter closes the tri...

This chapter examines the changing nature and meanings of manual work, with an emphasis on two poles: craftsmanship and precarious work, which are used as ‘ideal types’. The first part defines craftsmanship as ‘an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake’ (Sennett, The craftsman. Yale University Press, New Haven,...

This chapter examines a second discursive layer that goes beyond the ‘ideal values’ (the grand narrative), to the ‘real values’ that are relevant in shaping the actual interactions in the world. The analysis links young people’s accounts (related to high aspirations, centrality of personal happiness, consumption and experimentation) with the broade...

This book explores how the changing nature of work intersects with and influences young people’s views on their future. As an increasingly precarious service sector overtakes traditional industrial work, vocational education and training (VET) is held up as a panacea for poverty alleviation, youth unemployment and economic growth. However, the view...

Tech entrepreneurship grows at a time the notion of work is accentuating its structural shift towards increased precariousness. This research interviewed 53 young people from Romania who received national or international prizes for technical innovations/ inventions. The aim was to gain a better understanding of the processes involved in turning an...

This analytical paper briefly explores issues related to (1) the relation between young people and the labour market and (2) formal and non-formal learning and training as means for supporting young people's personal and professional development. The paper is largely informed by the discussions among participants at the Symposium 'Youth Policy Resp...

Boundaries defining and shaping the field of vocational education and further training (VET). (1) Systems: Socio-culturally different VET systems have evolved along conceptual lines. The comparison of different skill formation systems and governance of VET systems are on the one hand of theoretical and on the other hand of practical importance in...

At the time social entrepreneurship gains momentum, youth organizations try to assume new roles: either by providing youth entrepreneurship trainings or by becoming ‘entrepreneurial’ themselves. However, these processes are not free of contradictions and unsolved tensions. The article highlights some dilemmas of the conventional discourses on socia...

This summary report provides a synthesis of the responses to the EKCYP questionnaires (‘Country templates’) on Social inclusion that have been submitted to the EKCYP. It reflects the data in 21countries/ regions as of March 2015. EKCYP stands for The European Knowledge Centre for Youth Policy, which is an on-line database intended to provide the yo...

This article is interested in how young Roma women negotiate access to university in family and community contexts shaped by gendered expectations and conflicting roles. It is based on 37 in-depth interviews with young Roma women in Romania's higher education or recent graduates. The paper argues that Roma women need to negotiate their aspirations...

This paper revisits the current policy assumptions on youth entrepreneurship and their possible implications on entrepreneurial learning in nonformal settings. Based on secondary literature analysis, it interrogates the nonformal learning practices that promote entrepreneurship and calls for entrepreneurial learning to incorporate higher awareness...

Concepts from the semantic field of social, civic, and public entrepreneurship are often used, celebrated, and rarely examined comparatively. This is a book that takes the time to delve in more detailed conceptual analysis. The volume is the product of a research project led by Björn Bjerke at Linnaeus University and financed by the Swedish Knowled...

The book was published by SALTO-Youth Participation, a Resource Centre of the European Commission. It looks into the relationship between youth work (non-formal learning) and entrepreneurship. The book explores the theoretical developments in the field, the ethical dilemmas and tensions, and proposes practice-oriented information: illustrative exam...

This qualitative paper explores Roma students’ perceptions on the policy of assigning ‘special places’ for Roma in Romania’s universities. Findings suggest that Roma see themselves as occupying a precarious social space, concerned not as much to hide perceived merit violation but to handle (alleged) inadequacies given by their stigmatized ethnicity...

Roma ethnicity is one of the most stigmatised identities of today’s Europe. An emerging discourse on ‘Roma pride’ aims to reshape this widespread perception, especially among the educated youth. Drawing on 57 interviews with young people with/in higher education in Romania, this article looks into their experiences of self-identification as Roma. O...

The book provides a single entry point for those trying to familiarize with a field that is rapidly expanding. With over 1200 pages, the two volumes include 75 articles on social entrepreneurship, dating from 1987 to 2011. The book is edited by four American researchers based in business schools, with extensive professional experience in the area o...

Often regarded as part of the solution for economic growth, entrepreneurship has reached a political momentum. Various universities now offer courses in entrepreneurship; there is an [European Union] EU-wide policy on entrepreneurial learning in high schools, while the concept of the 'enterprising child' (Gribben, 2006) is likely to make the approa...

The chapter will explore the intersection between Romania’s tertiary education and the issue of citizenship and democracy. There are many ways universities may foster students’ active citizenship: from voluntary work in community to promoting diversity of students and teaching staff and diversity coursework. This paper argues that for the time bein...

Roma migration from Romania is often precarious and takes place in circumstances that increase pre-existent levels of vulnerability. For many, migration is a last resort solution for navigating an insecure economic environment. For others, it has become a source of profit they draw upon, sometimes at the expense of the most vulnerable members of Ro...

This qualitative study explores young people’s perceptions of unfairness when involved in cross-border volunteering. It extends the theoretical understanding of volunteering, by adding to the notion of barriers of access, the idea that poor volunteer management may pose obstacles in the process of volunteering. The research indicates that the young...

Previous research asked why people do volunteer, but rarely asked what makes them not to. When indeed this happened, in Eastern Europe answers were rather conventional attributions to the communist system. This paper revisits this statement by looking at the perceived present-day constraints likely to be responsible for young people's low rate of c...

The chapter explores how children and young people1 with migrant parents internalise a citizenship identity shaped by a discourse focused on victimisation, uncertainty and institutional mistrust. It is built on the idea that citizenship is a learning process sustained by individual and collective narratives and consists of memories, shared values a...

Residential bridge camps provide intensive education in residential settings with the aim of preparing hard-core child laborers to be integrated in mainstream schools. The author reviews the extent to which residential bridge camps are effective interventions for integrating former child laborers into the mainstream schools at age appropriate level...

Drawing on qualitative interviews in six Roma communities from Transylvania (Romania), the paper examines women's histories of migration. It explores how gender norms and expectations intersect migration and what the perceived benefits and costs associated with mobility may be. Women's personal meanings of migration vary, from ensuring social mobil...

This research examines how the internal social dynamics of Roma communities at home shape their propensity to migrate. It is theoretically grounded in the literature on social capital and focuses on two core concepts: ‘migration-rich’ and ‘migration-poor’ communities. The research is based on in-depth interviews and informal discussions with Roma f...

This article concerns young people's experiences with care giving when their parents migrate. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 21 young people from Transylvania (Romania), the article examines their accounts of living in transnational families: how the experience of care giving intersects their transitions to adulthood and the personalised me...

Whilst a large number of parents from Romania migrate for work, the surrogate-parenting role of grandmothers remains overlooked both in policies and in research. This article explores, through 24 in-depth interviews, the often-invisible experiences of grandmothers, for a more complete understanding of the process of migration and the necessary deve...

This paper revisits the more conventional approaches of volunteering, by looking into the experiences of young people involved in long-term cross-border volunteering in Romania. Drawing on qualitative interviews with European Voluntary Service volunteers, the paper examines how this experience is intersecting their learning trajectories. The resear...

The article examines whether parental migration is changing the dynamics of power within families. It is based on in-depth interviews with young people between 14 and 20 years who experience parental migration from Romania. It is argued that despite factors that may facilitate less authoritarian relations in transnational families, migration does n...

The article explores the social, cultural and economical processes that lead Roma children into labour and their own interpretations of the value and risks of working. Based on qualitative research in several Roma communities in Romania the article analyses the different family strategies in coping with the economic difficulties of transition and t...

Roma children are a social group with a history of accumulated disadvantages. Even if child labor is not something experienced by Roma children, due to the level of poverty and exclusion there is a greater risk that Roma children will enter the world of labor at an early stage. Such labor would principally include seasonal work in agriculture, in c...