Contributions in the collection EMERGY - Youths, Work, Sport

The world of work in transition for youth worldwide

SKEMA Publika’s EYES report on the thoughts of international youths highlighted a distrust of the corporate world and a series of concerns shared around the world. In light of this, we wanted to go further in our exploration of young people’s relationship to work. This multi-faceted analysis stems from the reflections of a working group, combined with expert interviews and a literature review. The study highlights the fundamental aspirations shared by youths around the world. Its results suggest that young people’s demands are the expression of latent social dissatisfactions shared with the rest of the population, which public and private decision-makers have failed to address. In short, the “social contract of work” is widely perceived as deteriorated. Thankfully, solutions seem to be within reach: greater participation in decision-making processes, decent working conditions, exemplarity, etc. In spite of the ongoing radical societal changes, the main risk for young people aged 15-29 remains job insecurity. Far from reducing the degree of uncertainty faced by younger generations, the emergence of the green economy and the digitalisation and automation of employments may be fostering greater insecurity. What can we do? Anticipate and think long-term.

Qatar, Saudi Arabia: Sport Is Also a Means to Accumulate Power and Build Control

Opinion piece by Simon Chadwick States have long played a role in sport, sometimes in promoting participation and at other times in helping governments to achieve political ends. This role is often perceived as being positive, for instance in the way it is intended to address public health challenges. Though states’ engagement with sport can be for malign reasons, indeed there are many examples of sport being deployed for propaganda purposes. Such is the potential for states to exert their influence over and through sport that, for example, football’s governing body FIFA explicitly prohibits states from intervening in national associations.

Paris 2024: A Unique Geoeconomic Opportunity for France

Opinion by Jean-Baptiste Guégan | The Paris 2024 Games are about more than mere sporting excitement. They carry with them major economic stakes for more actors than the host city alone. An ideal opportunity to recall the growing importance of the geoeconomy of sport.

The Future of Sport: Needs and Ideas of International Youth for Use by Policymakers

With the Rugby World Cup 2023 and the Paris 2024 Olympic Games just around the corner, sport is a daily feature in the media, in political and economy columns, and in conversations with family and friends. Everyone agrees on the importance of promoting sport for all and on the benefits of sport for young people, particularly in terms of improving health, developing autonomy, improving employability, and teaching values. But what do we know about what the younger generation think of it? After all, they are the ones who are going to be discovering it and participating in it (or not). This is a complex subject, as sport is so multidimensional and multifaceted. In this context, and in keeping with the general aims of SKEMA Publika, we wished to conduct a comprehensive study focusing on sport, so as to identify, based on the expectations expressed by the young people of a number of countries, the major evolutions which are likely but also necessary over a ten-year period, while taking into account the national and international policies currently in place, then put forward some recommendations for national and international policy-makers. To do this, we listened to online discussions on Twitter and analysed 7.6 million tweets posted by 670,000 young people aged 18 to 24. We also conducted interviews and surveys with 100 students of 18 different nationalities, with different sports levels.

Broadcasting the 2023 Women’s World Cup: A Chance To Make a Difference

by Jean-Baptiste Guegan | Why should we buy the rights to the next FIFA World Cup? The Cup will take place from July 20 to August 20 in Australia and New Zealand. A unique opportunity to "bring women’s soccer to the forefront and show that it is just as important as men’s football", as FIFA General Secretary Fatma Samoura recently put it. And yet, not everyone will be able to see it. Even today, some broadcasters are unable or unwilling to finance the rights to broadcast the event, thus depriving millions of spectators of the event. France, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom, all historic footballing hotspots, are among the absentees.

As the World Goes Meta, Will Sporting Events Follow?

In this article, Simon Chadwick (SKEMA Business School) & Rauf Mammadov (PwC) aim to explore the prospect of the metaverse platform in the sporting arena, arguing that although the market size of the metaverse is predicted to grow exponentially over the next few years, effective adoption, and utilization of metaverse platforms for sporting events will require addressing unique challenges.

Saints, Symbols and Soccer – What’s Acceptable and Who Decides?

The last 30 years have been characterised by unprecedented changes, amongst them globalisation and digitalisation. In sports, this means that international competitions are increasingly held in countries that hitherto haven’t played hosts, which brings unfamiliar values, norms, and conventions to their staging. In these circumstances, seemingly innocent symbols and signs can become ideologically, politically and socio-culturally charged, challenging many of us either to confront what offends us or to modify our views of what we think is acceptable.

[Debate] International Youth and the Corporate World: the Great Distrust ?

On May 20th 2022, SKEMA PUBLIKA, in partnership with UNIDO Brussels organised a conference entitled "International Youth at Work : Distrust of the Corporate World, Political Demands?". The conference highlighted some of the major concerns and demands that international youth have about the corporate world. The invited stakeholders (European Commission, companies, youth organizations) got to expose a useful variety of viewpoints and suggest some ways forward on this major issue.

EYES: What Are the Political Preoccupations of Young Americans?

Corporate world, traditional media, social networks, security and artificial intelligence: what do young American think about such topics? This analysis gathers and delves deeper into the American data presented in the EYES 2021 (Emergy Youth Early Signs) report on the emerging concerns of 18- to 24-year-olds of five nationalities: Brazilian, Chinese, American, French, and South African. The EYES 2021 report published in February 2022 sought to analyse the perceptions of 18- to 24-year-olds from the five countries in which SKEMA Business School operates, on five political issues prioritised by young people in that age group: traditional media and the press, social media, security, new technologies, and the world of work. The report is the fruit of qualitative interviews conducted with 36 SKEMA students, and of social listening carried out on Twitter between July 2020 and June 2021. The detailed methodology for this work is annexed to the EYES 2021 report.