“Over a quarter of marginalised youths have foreign backgrounds. Their entry into Finland’s education and labour markets is four or five times more difficult than that of their native Finnish counterparts,” says Pekka Myrskylä, Head of Development at Statistics Finland’s Population Statistics Department, who compiled the report for EVA.

Youths are classified as marginalised if they are not part of the workforce or any study programmes and lack education beyond primary school. The study suggests that education is a key factor in preventing marginalisation.

Marginalisation affects every third young person who has only basic education and speaks a foreign language as a mother tongue. The corresponding figure for native Finnish youths is one in eight.

In 2010, some 51,300 youths between the ages of 15-29 were excluded from society. This accounts for about five percent of all people in that age bracket.

“At the heart of social exclusion are 32,500 outsider youths who aren’t even registered as job seekers,” Myrskylä says. “They’re youths missing from all statistics. Nobody really knows who they are and what they’re doing.”