Introduction
Active duty military service in the United States Armed Forces is a primary way that millions of Americans gain and maintain employment. Of late, there has been an increase in the number of jobless young people or youth joining the military for economic as well as political reasons. Basically, in recent times there have been many children that are involved in a war in most of the war-affected countries, an issue that has raised concern on worldwide security and the interests of the young generation. In previous years, this was not taken as an issue; however, currently, there are ideas which state the reason behind this dogma.
According to the Global Development Report that was published in 2007 by the World Bank, it was found that there were around 1.5 billion youths aged between 12 and 24, and out of these, 1.3 billion were found to be from developing countries. This reflects on the fact that most of these young people grow up in societies where there is poor education as well as high rates of unemployment. In many areas of the world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, the problem has been dominant. This makes the children feel as if they are outcasts and they are not important in society.
Domestic and international conflicts deny the children the chance to attain better education as well as skills that are useful in their life. Such kind of a child will underrate him/herself and eventually join armed mercenaries. People tend to believe that when youth feel out of place or insignificant, they look for immediate alternatives or solutions. It has also been found that poor education and unemployment offer a good ground on which unhealthy gangs and militias germinate and develop. This is mainly due to a lack of hope and the feeling of disaffection in society. As a result, these youths seclude themselves and gradually become influenced by the warlords whose aim is to cause conflicts and disrupt the peace of society.
Jobless young people can also merge and form groups that lead to demonstrations and cause conflicts. It was reported that in 1936, during the International Labor Conference Geneva, there were about five hundred young people who demonstrated outside this conference hall. This was just but a small fraction of the seven million youth who were unemployed in the developed countries. Moreover, this was a voice from the many potentially unemployed youths in the world.
In the event that these youths were not handled properly at such a time, they would have caused conflicts which might have left some dead and many injured. Indeed, it would be correct to say that most of these youth were involved actively as well as passively in the Second World War. Most of the youths when idle always try to get something that they can be associated with and the most frequently found are the groups that operate with illegal intent. Most of these groups are formed in pursuit of solidarity and a sense of belonging; that is when these groups start involving themselves in bad conduct. This paper will discuss the incidences of jobless youth joining the military, the main reasons, and causes as well as the possible solutions to unemployment of the youth.
Unemployment in America
Pros
It is stated that most of the youths in America join the military due to expansion of the nuclear energy and the need for more employees. I agree that there is the advancement of technology in America which translates to the creation of more job opportunities. As technology advances, the military has also expanded. This results in the need to employ more militants. Since the youths are energetic and masculine, they are getting opportunities in the armed force in America.
Many claim that the companies are absorbing fresh graduates into the companies. I wish to object to these since there are so many students that are being released every year from universities and colleges. Many universities are incorporating military studies in the curriculum of modern education. This is giving the youths the basic foundations of military training. As a result, many youths in America are being absorbed in military services. The continued expansion of the forces is providing sustainable employment.
It is true that without the military, there would be no peace in the country and even in homes. Armed forces have enhanced security by employing many militants to keep law and order. However, due to the development of nuclear study and the need to expand the military force, there has been the creation of avenues for employment. Most Americans are finding the military as a sustainable job offering area in America. As the technology is being expanded, there is a need to employ more militants and thus the creation of jobs for Americans.
Cons
There is a lot of unemployment in many places including America. The issue of racism is also leading black Americans to join the military since it is the only way out. Some black Americans join the military so as to gain or maximize the opportunities that are available in career while others join with the aim of relieving themselves from the monotony and boredom of unemployment. In economies like America, joblessness in black youths is attributed to racism and discrimination. However, it is noted that even those who get positions in military, the positions are the junior positions that the white do not bother rushing for (Williams 258).
Getting employment is becoming harder as most of rural laborers flock in towns in pursuit for jobs. In this case, poorly educated youths find themselves caught in dependency to their parents. Some decide to get married but have nothing to offer to their spouses, forcing them to get something else to do; and it’s not surprising to note that most of them indulge themselves in drug abuse due to peer pressure. Under the influence of drugs, these youths tend to prove they are men and start bullying.
They become rough and masculine, ‘virtues’ that are needed in military. Coincidentally, many off them seek employment in the military because it is the only one that seems to employ people with low levels of education and requires the masculinity aspect of life (Coote 3). Therefore expansion of the military forces is not the reason why many people are joining the military.
Poverty in some families has led to emergence of some vices in the community. Domestic violence in many places in the world is associated to the background of the families in that area. It has been found that crime is also associated with the increasing number of single parent families and skyrocketing proportions of juvenile offending. Most of those that are responsible for crime are mainly men but the ones who suffer from these crimes are mainly women.
It is the culture of many communities that men are muscular and this is related with the masculinity aspect that is needed in military training. Basically, the issue of masculinity has been linked with all sorts of violence, both domestic and international. Majority of these youths form militias in some third world countries and start harassing people as has been witnessed in many parts of Africa. Unfortunately, the effect is felt everywhere in the whole globe; in the Middle East, the case has been the same. These are the root causes of tribal wars and international conflicts. Enculturation has affected most youths in barely every continent.
There is a lot of co-modification of the way youths behave and conduct themselves. Some of them think critically and reason that crime is a way of expressing and satisfying your ego. A big number of young American men indulge in criminal activities and end up being supervised by criminal judicial systems. Unlike other countries, these Americans have working experience; some of these young men are career criminals who get involved in criminal activities throughout their life. A number of them work at legal forms of employment when available but they then conduct crime in the event that these jobs are not available though others combine both kinds of jobs.
According to Blanchflwer, Richard and National Bureau of Economic Research (215), “in poor communities in the United States crime in the 1980s and 1990s was not an aberrant or peripheral activity but rather a normal component of economic and social life for many young persons.” The immense indulgence of young people in crime affects the national well-being; it offers a threat to the victims of crime; it also calls for the government to put a kit for crime prevention. It has been found that most of those jailed are the black Americans who are most adversely affected by increased levels of unemployment, thus bringing the aspect of racism in America.
Case study in Africa
Culture can be partly blamed for contributing to the way youths join the military in Africa. There are some traditional behaviors that are conducted that introduce the youth into military way of life. This for instance led to the genocide in Rwanda, Africa. In Africa, specifically in Rwanda after the genocide, the youth who had fled to other neighboring countries came back with hope to get back what they had lost, including their freedom.
Most of them were eager to get back to their home country and get employed; but on arriving, they never got jobs. Most of them opted to join the army which by then required them for reinforcement. Basically, joblessness led many to join the militias which organized intertribal wars that left many dead in Rwanda. It was found that most of them had little or no education, while most of these young men could also not travel due to intimidation by the administration.
This would trigger brainstorming in their mind and trigger them to form repulsive groups that later became the militias. For one to travel to Kigali, one had to be approved by the area authority. These difficulties made most of the immigrants to use other dubious ways of traveling; unfortunately the only way that seemed best for them was through military. Moreover, lack of jobs and poor education was attributed to be the main cause of this misdeed.
African countries are not as developed as America. The governance is also not at its best. The major cause of unemployment in Rwanda was poor governance and the tribal wars. Basically, the government was not keen on the needs of the youths in that country, while the population was growing a high rate than the growth of economy, leading to many of the youths being idle. These youths eventually joined the militias that led the genocide. Those who managed to escape the genocide went to the neighboring countries and became refugees. However, after coming back, there were no jobs yet as the government had not established something for them to do (Bannon, Correia and Correia 149).
Hypothetical consequences of youth unemployment
As much as there is a lot of development in America and expansion of armed forces that offer job opportunities, there are still high levels of unemployment. There are hypothetical aftermaths of persistent unemployment of youths aged between 15 and 25 in the society. A certain group of young adults who are unemployed are at a risk of forming a part of an underclass of socially, culturally as well as economically marginalized people.
Although in most of the developed countries the rate of unemployed youths has gone down, there are still a large number of youths who are strolling down the streets of the markets because they lack the credentials that are currently required. In addition, there is high competition in the job market due to the increased enrollment of students in high schools. The number of students that are coming out of schools every year outnumbers the few opportunities that are available for employment. This leaves many young men unemployed, and in many cases they are idle. Others are the students from poor families or from marginalized areas who lack money to advance their education to make them competitive enough for the few positions that are available.
We claim that industrialization has opened many avenues for employment. However, industrialization has also had an effect on the number of unemployed youths. Improvement in economy has led many students to dropping out of school and thus denying them the chance to gunner a position in the job market. The problems associated with developed economy are like broken families, negligence in the homes, unemployed parents, as well as alcohol and drug abuse. Indeed, youngsters from such families frequently have problems right from early childhood (Petersen and Mortimer 229).
Unemployment has societal consequences that are linked to it. There is a group of people who when they do not get jobs often get contented with the situation and seclude themselves from the society. This results to social exclusion in most cases. Such families when they come together in one place, they become marginalized and secluded. In this case, the unemployed individual as well as his social environment appears to be undergoing a fatal process.
Youths in West Africa
In the western Africa, there is oil drilling projects which earn a lot of income. Due to the improvement of economy, the youths in these regions gang up to protect the wealth of their community; in many places, they are called vigilante groups. In the Niger Delta region, there are so many youth headed militia groups, mainly as a result of oil deposits. Most of the young people gang up and form these militia groups so as to control the income from the oil, and to some extent, leading to battles that are normally between the federal and state governments on one side and the ethnic groups in the region. All these militias are mainly made up of youths from these regions and have one common goal: the right to control the resources within their communities for the benefit of all their people.
The situations in the western countries provided a good ground for the young people to form or join these militias and propagated violence in the regions. These militias led to the collapse of the Nigerian economy that entirely depended on oil exploitation in the early 1980s. This is because these militia groups did not have insight but their main aim was to control the revenue obtained from these oil deposits. This led to more unemployment to even university graduates.
During an interview that was conducted after the collapse of Nigerian economy, it was found that three quarters of the youths had joined the militia groups due to frustrations that emanated from unemployment in addition to the determination to revenge for the injustice that was performed by the Nigerian Ruling leaders. This frustration led to many other violent activities like armed robbery and drug trafficking (Daiute 80).
Main causes
The emergence of ethnic militias in many countries should be viewed as a struggle for political power and the scarce monetary resources by a variety of militia groups. Ethnicity has in many places been viewed as a good tool for gaining political power. The politicians normally play a greater role in the formation of ethnic militias with an aim of winning votes from these people. These ethnic groups are mainly formed by young people who even move at night campaigning and in many cases they cause conflicts against their opponents. These young people are mainly the ones that have no jobs and go campaigning for a politician hoping to be given money. Later these men form militia groups for solidarity and starts committing crime.
The prolonged lifespan of military law has been linked with youth violence in many countries. This is the opinion that most of the academic and human rights activists have concerning the youths. Prolonged military law has militarized the society up to the point that most of people in the society have believed that the only way to obtain success or climb the ladder to the top in a nation is through force and violence. Most of the youths become violent and confrontational in the way they approach issues in any country.
Ethnic militias are the root cause of violence and confrontation in any country. These youths because of their solidarity can cause mass destruction especially when there is tension in any country. Due to frustration of these youths, most of them when they get little money they end up in drug abuse and drug trafficking. Others join gang groups which use force in robbery. This is affecting most of the developing countries where there are no enough resources to start up youth development projects.
It is good that guns were invented for security purposes. With guns as protective weapons that are used by the armed forces, security has been beefed up. Nevertheless, guns have also played a big role in initiating, strengthening and sustaining the youth violence. In many countries including the developed countries, the militia groups are well armed with modern war arms that are dangerous to the whole community. These firearms are illegally obtained from military depots, mainly polices stations and from military personnel who are corrupt. These personnel hire out their weapons to these gangs at a certain fee. There are other weapons that are attained from local manufactures in most countries.
Racism has played a great role in America. Most of the black Americans have suffered the blow of unemployment. The few that are lucky join the military in junior levels. The problems of unemployment for Black youth has bee contributed by the government decrease inn funding for job training projects in addition to poor planning and targeting. In developed countries like America, the prevalent of poverty, illiteracy and high levels of unemployment is a human tragedy and an economic waste. It can be termed as a political disaster and unethical to the ones in office who perpetrate it. The human tragedy and economic waste amongst the Black who are unemployed can be seen as marginalization. Unemployment is closely associated with crime, drug abuse as well as illness (Jennings 158).
There are universities that have provided the path of intervention in the third world countries by developing military research and advancement that has propagated warfare state, increasing its power locally and internationally. This well planned support for war making as well as war thinking has penetrated even to the soft social sciences. These students think of war and when they come out of school and do not find jobs, they end up joining military.
There are many students that are exposed to the military research and most of them join military because of the war thoughts. Universities are kinked to Defense Departments via research as well as work applied and carried out under charter by Defense Department in addition to other associated institutes. Ill minded students can take this advantage to cause conflict in colleges and the community. There are such incidences that have occurred in universities when there are student’s union elections (Feldman 152).
Conclusion
Unemployment can be addressed by improving the economy of a country. This requires some of the developing countries to hire economic advisors who cal develop long term achievements of the country (Lezhnev 43). According to Lezhnev (43), “the partnering of local community mobilization, external political will, and regional engagement has been and will continue to be the key to fighting warlordism in this rough environment.” Combinations of local, regional as well as external actors are the successful strategies for dealing with warlords.
The government can as well develop youth development projects like cooperative to enhance the involvement of youths. This will create jobs for the youths and they will get money as well as skills that are important to their life. This has been initiated in African countries where there have been persistent warlords like Rwanda, Nigeria and many more.
The kinds of education programs in universities should be changed to suit the job market today. This is because it has been found that graduates of apprenticeship programs are more prone to unemployment than the graduates of vocational training programs. This will help many students who come out of colleges with high hopes of getting a job but end up being frustrated. More so they will gain the needed skills to competent enough in the job market (Asch, et al 16). The increase of development of nuclear energy has led to expansion of the military work in many countries including America. This as a result provides a good opportunity for the Americans to find jobs in military.
Works Cited
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