THE DESTABILISATION OF YOUTH EMPLOYMENT MECHANISMSIN EU COUNTRIES: THE ETHNOPOLITICAL DIMENSION

The article analyzes young people’s political responses to the destabilization of employment mechanisms in EU countries from an ethnopolitical perspective. It substantiates that labor precarization, the spread of non-standard forms of employment, the growing share of NEET youth, and significant structural barriers to entering the labor market extend beyond a purely economic discourse, becoming a powerful trigger of ethnopolitical polarization. The concept of “political reflection” is conceptualized as a cognitive, emotional, and behavioral response of youth groups to institutional uncertainty. It is demonstrated that this reflection is channeled into a broad range of actions – from electoral support for radical political forces and mass street protests to emigration, passive absenteeism, and destructive social alienation. The study demonstrates that the ethnocultural context and the integration model of a particular state determine how young people interpret the subjective “culprits” of an economic crisis. Among precarious indigenous (titular) youth, destabilization fuels right-wing radical populism, generates status anxiety, and articulates demands for “national priority” in the labor market. By contrast, for youth with a migrant background, systemic discrimination and spatial segregation contribute to the phenomenon of ethnic ghettoization, resulting in reactive alienation from state institutions or spontaneous urban riots. Based on the comparative method, the article proposes an original typology of four regional models within the EU: Scandinavian, Continental, Southern European, and Central and Eastern European. It demonstrates that economic shocks of a similar nature produce fundamentally different trajectories and forms of youth political mobilization depending on the specific characteristics of national social protection systems and ethnopolitical frameworks of civic integration. Prospects for further research include examining the specific features of the sociocultural and electoral responses of young Ukrainian refugees and labor migrants in EU countries, as well as the transformation of ethnopolitical discourses in host European societies on this basis.