This thesis argues that young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) are created as a political category and constructed for political purposes. It adopts a post-structural approach, aligning itself with Michel Foucault’s theoretical framework and utilising Carol Bacchi’s (2009) analytic strategy ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’. This thesis interrogates the thinking that the NEET category warrants government intervention. In addition, it examines the socio-historical, cultural, and political truisms that underpin the existence of the NEET category.

Twelve New Zealand government documents, published between 2014 and 2018, were chosen for interrogation. The aim of this investigation was to understand how NEET young people are represented as certain types of problems, and to trace the political strategies deployed to ‘fix’ NEET young people. Firstly, I located the dominant discourses contained in the documents and secondly, I analysed how these discourses have come to be understood as commonly accepted truths. Finally, I explored the potential implications that these discourses may have for young people’s lives.

Analysis of the documents revealed three dominant discourses: in all the documents NEET young people are represented as 1) a risky yet vulnerable group, 2) as experiencing problematic transitions from childhood to adulthood and/or from education to employment, and 3) being financial liabilities to the state. All three discourses position NEET young people as being ultimately responsible for their circumstances.

In the chosen documents, NEET young people are often represented in conflicting yet, at times, similar ways. By interrogating dominant discourses within government documents this thesis opens up spaces for challenge and dissent. This document analysis exposes the potential effects that problematic representations may have on the lives of young people and encourages practitioners to challenge policies and practices that impact NEET young people in order to provide positive outcomes for them.