Chapter 1 - Introduction NEET or Not? Individualisation, structural inequality and social reproduction Work-based learning and Entry to Employment Ethnography: a distinctive analytical mentality Researching E2E: an ethnography of work-based learning Outline of the book Chapter 2 - Knowledge, Economy and Social Exclusion Globalisation and social change Education and the neo-liberal state Knowledge, economy and education Employability and labour market returns Individualisation, risk and the state Social exclusion in the UK Widening participation Work, training and welfare Chapter 3 - Sixty Years of Youth Transitions Youth transitions in the post-war era Crisis, change and shifting transitions School to work in the 21st century Conceptualising contemporary transitions Young people, class and social exclusion Chapter 4 - Young People not in Education, Employment or Training Too young and too precious to waste Estimating the numbers of NEET young people Structure of the NEET population Being and becoming: underlying risks of becoming NEET Educational achievement and educational disadvantage Self, family and neighbourhood Educational disaffection Consequences of being NEET Constructing a problem category: the discourse of NEET Cultures of worklessness? NEET and the dynamics of social exclusion Supporting to learn and paying to learn: Connexions and EMA Chapter 5 - Entry to Employment: Young People, Learning and Agency E2E: origins and curriculum structure The E2E curriculum E2E providers and selection of the case-study sites Young people and E2E programmes Learning environments Learning activities Agency, culture and constraint Chapter 6 - The Tutors' Story: Professional practice and pedagogy in E2E Teachers and tutors in further education Biographies of tutors - becoming an E2E practitioner Developing the E2E workforce? Tutors' constructions of E2E learners and learning Working with parents? Chapter 7 - Conclusion: what does research say to policy? NEET discourse and progressive practice Employment, economy and social justice Re thinking learning.