In this seminar, Reiko will deliver her final PhD presentation. Drawing on the findings from across her PhD studies, she will summarise her key approaches, results and contributions to existing knowledge, limitations and suggestions for future research. From this research and in this presentation, it is found that young Indonesians, both men and women, experience dynamic transition pathways to employment in a rapidly transforming society. It is an important timing for Indonesia because of an economic development boost, or a so called ‘demographic dividend’, which is anticipated to occur between 2020 and 2030 given that it has the most young people and largest economy in the Southeast Asia region. However, Indonesia has high youth unemployment rates. One of the features of Indonesia’s youth unemployment is long unemployed periods by well-educated youth. Past research has often used cross-sectional data, thus producing an overall picture but little understanding of the individual contexts of life experiences. Identifying transition patterns by using longitudinal data with life-course approaches is unique to the field and provides critical insights to understanding the socio-demographic changes in Indonesia.

Reiko Okumura-Rougeaux is a PhD candidate in the School of Demography at the Australian National University. Before her PhD, she worked as a monitoring and evaluation specialist at UNICEF in the Pacific and the Papua New Guinea offices and a consultant at the Headquarters of the Asian Development Bank in Manila, the Philippines. Her research is focused on understanding dynamic employment transition patterns of young people associated with socio-demographic issues such as work preference, education, urbanisation, gender and family relations.