Overqualified Minority Youth in a Detroit Job Training Program: Implications for the Spatial and Skills Mismatch Debates

Abstract

This article explores an unanticipated finding from my research study, “Suburban Job Search of Urban Workers,” which I implemented to study barriers to suburban job search as perceived by young Black and White workers in Detroit. Of 55 African American respondents, 33 (60%) had either been accepted to or attended college and may have been overqualified for the training programs they were in. Likely explanations for respondents’ choices include lack of networks, poor self-esteem, perceived financial issues, and the lure of jobs in the Big 3 firms in the context of an overarching “explanation”: the extreme and stark segregation that characterizes the Detroit metropolitan area. I believe that this entrenched segregation has both narrowed the information pipeline and increased the notion of “hostile suburbs” among Black urban youth. This perceived hostility is borne out by described discriminatory experiences and may have increased young people’s apprehension when seeking jobs and educational opportunities beyond Detroit’s borders.