On February 10, 2014, the consortium of the CUPESSE project, policy makers and practitioners got together in Mannheim, Germany, to officially mark the start of the project and to discuss the next steps.
Next to the coordinator, Prof. Jale Tosun, the president of the University of Mannheim, Prof. Ernst-Ludwig von Thadden, welcomed the international audience to the Mannheim Castle. He emphasized the political implications and the importance of the project for Europe and its youth.
The coordinating institution, the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES), hosted the subsequent two-day opening conference, where the participating scientists and consultants quickly created a common understanding regarding the project goals and individual roles. In this enthusiastic atmosphere, the group planned out several survey studies analyzing the intergenerational transmission of attitudes and values, as well as studying employers’ demands. While working on the specifics, the consortium reiterated the overarching goal of the project: To understand the interrelation of inherited attitudes and young people’s access to the job market, which will inform the development of recommendations to policy makers to tackle youth unemployment in Europe.