You are invited to attend an SKOPE Seminar with ⁠Emmanuel Edudzie.

Abstract  

School-to-work transition is often imagined as a movement from education into stable employment, supported by skills acquisition, labour market matching and institutional guidance. Drawing on my DPhil thesis, this seminar challenges that assumption by examining the experiences of work-bound school-leavers in Accra, Ghana, namely young people who complete secondary education but do not proceed directly into tertiary education or formal post-secondary training.

Based on a qualitative multi-stakeholder study involving young people, employers and employment services practitioners, the presentation explores how post-secondary transitions unfold in an urban labour market characterised by informality, weak formal job absorption and limited institutional intermediation. The findings show that transition is rarely linear. Instead, many young people navigate informal work, periods of waiting, social networks, trial work, household pressure and repeated adjustment to unstable opportunities.

The seminar argues that informal employment is not simply a residual destination after failed formal transition, but a central terrain through which work-bound youth seek income, dignity, learning and future mobility. It also examines how work-readiness is relationally produced, how social capital mediates access to work, and how employment services often remain weakly connected to the realities of non-tertiary youth. In doing so, the presentation contributes to debates on skills, employability and youth transitions by reframing school-to-work transition as a relational and informalised process rather than a linear pathway from education into employment.