Pandemic to Affect Youths’ Career Entries, Health and Psychological Development, Says Robin Samuel in Interview with Contacto

Contacto’s Paula Santos Ferreira has asked Prof. Dr. Robin Samuel for his views on possible consequences of the current pandemic for Luxembourgish youths. Citing preliminary results of the study Young People and COVID-19 (YAC+), her recent article  speaks to a large readership of Portuguese-speaking people in Luxembourg.

Samuel, co-author of the study, specified that more than half of the adolescents and young adults, who participated in the study, worry about COVID-19 and its potential for change. Young people whose parents were not born in Luxembourg tend to worry even more. This might be related to socio-economic aspects, the researcher adds. This finding however, does not exclusively relate to young Portuguese or Portuguese-speaking Luxembourgers.

According to international studies, the youth will be harshly confronted with the consequences of the pandemic in the years to come. On the level of education and financial insecurity, this will probably have an augmenting effect for socio-economic inequalities that are already in place, writes Santos Ferreira.

From her conversation with Robin Samuel, the contacto journalist also takes away that this young generation will most likely have to postpone their entry into the labour market and expect unemployment in the early stages of their careers. This affects their economic revenues, their health and their emotional well-being.

Concluding her interview with Robin Samuel, Paula Santos Ferreira looks forward to reading the results of the YAC+ study’s follow-up analyses, coming up this year and also in 2023/2024. More information about YAC+ is available here, on the pages of the Digital Documentation and Research Centre. Paula Santos Ferreira has also published stories of young people in Luxembourg and Portugal. They can be read (in Portuguese) here.