YOUNG NEETs: DROPOUT, EXCLUSION AND EVOLUTIONARY ADAPTATION. STATE OF THE ART

Abstract

Young people who neither study nor work (NEETs) are a latent problem in Latin America, with high rates in the Colombian Caribbean. This article makes a critical and semi-systematic documentary review to analyze the causes, manifestations and responses to the phenomenon in the region, in comparative dialogue with the experiences present in the United Kingdom, Japan and the United States. Through the review in seven databases (WoS, Scopus, SciELO, Dialnet, among others) and institutional repositories, 50 documents published between 2018 and 2025 were analyzed. The findings indicate that, while in the Colombian Caribbean the NEET condition is associated with accumulated structural determinants, poverty, ethnic exclusion, informality, in other contexts subjective or racialized factors predominate. A major lack of hegemonic approaches is recognized, associated with the lack of frameworks that integrate psychosocial and structural dimensions. As an original contribution, evolutionary psychology is proposed as an interpretative framework, resignifying demotivation not as an individual fault, but as an adaptive strategy to environments considered to be of low opportunity.