Article

The prevalence of 'life planning': Evidence from UK graduates

Taylor & Francis
British Journal of Sociology of Education
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Abstract

At a time when ‘personal development planning’ is being rolled out across the UK higher education sector, this paper explores young adults’ inclinations to plan for the future in relation to work, relationships and other aspects of life. Although Giddens has emphasised the prevalence of strategic life planning (or the ‘colonisation of the future’) in all strata of contemporary society, du Bois Reymond has argued that there are important differences by social class, with young people from more privileged backgrounds more likely than their peers to engage in such life‐planning activities. This paper draws on interviews with 90 young adults (in their mid‐20s) to question some of these assumptions about relationships between social location and propensity to plan for the future. It shows how, within this sample at least, there was a strong association between having had a privileged ‘learning career’ (such as attending a high‐status university and identifying as an ‘academic high flier’) and a disinclination to form detailed plans for the future. In part, this appeared to be related to a strong sense of ontological security and the confidence to resist what Giddens terms ‘an increasingly dominant temporal outlook’.

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... While now emerging in the sociology of youth, theorising about time and the lived experience of time has been a major focus of social theory (Adam 1990;Elias 1992;Nowotny 1994;. A number of recent studies focusing on young people have explicitly recognised that notions of a significant shift in temporal orientation underpins much contemporary youth research (Brannen and Nilsen 2002;Anderson, Bechhofer et al. 2005;Leccardi 2006;2007;Brooks and Everett 2008). This work has tended to take one of two positions. ...
... In explicit critique of Brannen and Nilsens's (2002) paper, Anderson and colleagues (2005), and Brooks and Everett (2008) have presented empirical material suggesting young people tend to approach their lives as a set of possibilities they must choose between, plan for and manage. This work draws on a different theoretical position on the shifting nature of the contemporary biography, where people have 'to colonise the future for themselves as an intrinsic part of their life-planning' (Giddens 1991, p. 125) and defends the notion of 'choice biography' as both studies' participants seemed to see elements of the biography that were previously closed or taken for granted, as now needing to be treated as important decisions to be made. ...
... This work draws on a different theoretical position on the shifting nature of the contemporary biography, where people have 'to colonise the future for themselves as an intrinsic part of their life-planning' (Giddens 1991, p. 125) and defends the notion of 'choice biography' as both studies' participants seemed to see elements of the biography that were previously closed or taken for granted, as now needing to be treated as important decisions to be made. In other words, these authors explicitly set themselves up in opposition of a present centredness and they do this by presenting (primarily) survey questionnaire data (Anderson et al, 2005) or material from qualitative interviews (Brooks and Everett, 2008) that fits with the argument that most young people do plan for the future, albeit to different degrees and time scales. ...
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Young people’s temporal orientation is now a major focus of youth studies. A central research question in this area is whether or not young people treat their futures as ‘choice biographies’ to be planned as a personal project. In this article I suggest that this focus has emerged in part from a misreading of contemporary sociological theory and I attempt to widen the focus of inquiry. Drawing on a qualitative interview with 50 young people in Australia aged 18 to 20, I highlight two significant elements of temporal orientation obscured by a focus on planning versus not planning. First, that young people mix multiple temporal orientations and strategies, of varying degrees of discursive explicitness, concurrently and as such can be present and future oriented at the same time. Second, that thinking about and shaping the future and enjoying, and coping in, the present are not individual pursuits but shaped collectively with significant others.
... The stated life plans of young people incorporate the foreseen obstacles and describe where and how someone plans to live in the future. Hence, there can be differences between the dreams for the future of young adults and their stated life plans, which tend to be more realistic (Anderson et al., 2005;Brooks & Everett, 2008;Yuliawati & Ardyan, 2020). Knowledge about the obstacles that may impede the realisation of dreams for the future, and their influence on the stated life plans of young people with a rural residential dream, may add to the knowledge of young adults and their future. ...
... This means that dreams for the future and stated life plans will not necessarily occur. However, earlier research suggests they have some predictive value (Anderson et al., 2005;Brooks & Everett, 2008). ...
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This paper examines the dreams for the future of young adults in Midden-Noord-Brabant and Zeeland, the Netherlands. Through 274 qualitative surveys and focus groups with 12 participants, it explores their dreams for the future, the obstacles they foresee in realising these dreams, and the influence of these obstacles on their stated life plans. The findings reveal a preference for areas outside settlements in residential dreams. Limited housing and career opportunities are identified as foreseen obstacles. These obstacles shape participants' stated life plans, which become more urban-oriented. Removing these obstacles can facilitate the realisation of rural residential dreams and promote rural areas as attractive areas to settle for new generations.
... The interviews support the findings of Brooks and Everett (2008) and Findlay et al. (2012) that mobility is not a single event, but that students engage in life planning. To continue with the example of John Chacko, he was brought up in Thiruvananthapuram, has insights into the field of fashion and can discuss and compare Italian and French haute couture. ...
... The Persian Gulf is closely connected with 'earning money' and countries like the UK or the US are more associated with high-skilled migration with emphasis on specific labour markets and the 'best' higher education institutions. Some middle-class students have long-term plans for mobility strategies (Brooks and Everett, 2008) between countries to accumulate different merits that will pay off better in another place, e.g. to go to the US for a degree, and then come back to India to work. Furthermore, mobility strategies are often compromised due to incompatibility in what you want to do and where you would like to be, or vice versa. ...
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The growing young middle class in India is often portrayed as encompassing a ‘global sensitivity’. International mobility is one strategy for middle class families to gain a positional advantage on a competitive labour market. Negotiating place attachment and global horizons may create a range of possibilities often attached to discourses of individualization and self-realization. This paper analyses young people’s dispositions towards mobility in the transition from education to work by drawing on Bourdieu’s central concepts of symbolic capital and habitus. Interviews with students in higher secondary school in Kerala’s state capital Thiruvananthapuram, southwest India, covered broad themes like future expectations, skills and knowledge, everyday whereabouts and family life which were discussed in relation to a perceived activity space. I argue that young people’s future aspirations are shaped in a profound way by the history of Kerala’s in and out migration, and draw attention to differences within the middle class where transnational capital distinguishes rather than unifies ‘Indian youth’. Furthermore, this paper unpacks the complex, variegated images of different cities, countries and regions as symbols of cultural or economic capital in Malayali students’ expectations of their future education and employment.
... We can approach it in at least four different ways: biographically (e.g., life planning, cf. Brooks & Everett, 2008), with respect to different populations/groups (e.g., age, cf. Steinberg et al., 2009), topic oriented (e.g., climate change, cf. ...
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Teacher education programs shape prospective teachers, and teachers (can) shape future generations. Teachers serve as multipliers for society; their beliefs and visions have a high influence on their teaching, independently from curriculum directives. This paper describes a study in which we reconstructed teacher education students' (n = 113) visions of the future in general as well as their future visions on learning and teaching. Methodologically, we chose an open, explanatory free-writing approach (micro-articles) to provide room for emotional expression and creativity. The analysis shows a wide variety of themes, approaches, and dispositions. The results indicate that teacher education programs can build awareness on future visions of prospective teachers. Thus, it appears important to allow them room in their training to reflect and further develop their expectations and visions of the future, so they realize their responsibility towards the future in their role as teachers.
... We can approach it in at least four different ways: biographically (e.g., life planning, cf. Brooks & Everett, 2008), with respect to different populations/groups (e.g., age, cf. Steinberg et al., 2009), topic oriented (e.g., climate change, cf. ...
Conference Paper
Teacher education programs shape prospective teachers, and teachers (can) shape future generations. Teachers serve as multipliers for society; their beliefs and visions have a high influence on their teaching, independently from curriculum directives. This paper describes a study in which we reconstructed teacher education students’ (n = 113) visions of the future in general as well as their future visions on learning and teaching. Methodologically, we chose an open, explanatory free-writing approach (micro-articles) to provide room for emotional expression and creativity. The analysis shows a wide variety of themes, approaches, and dispositions. The results indicate that teacher education programs can build awareness on future visions of prospective teachers. Thus, it appears important to allow them room in their training to reflect and further develop their expectations and visions of the future, so they realize their responsibility towards the future in their role as teachers.
... De este modo, aunque existen diferencias entre los estudiantes participantes del estudio, un primer aspecto que es necesario evidenciar remite a una disposición de una parte importante de ellos a administrar sus trayectorias personales en esta etapa temprana de su vida escolar. La emergencia de un discurso orientado a la planificación o al manejo de los proyectos vitales (Brooks y Everett, 2008) constituiría una base de esta capacidad electiva presente en la experiencia de los jóvenes. Tal orientación es consistente con los reportes de investigaciones en el área, particularmente referidos a estudiantes de cursos superiores o egresados de la educación técnica (Sepúlveda y Valdebenito, 2014, 2022Montecinos, 2020), quienes, retrospectivamente, valoran un modelo educativo que exige a sus estudiantes la definición temprana de rumbos a seguir. ...
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This article discusses a study on the process 10th grade Chilean students of compulsory education use to make their vocational choices, paying particular attention to those opting for the curricular alternative of a technical profession. The work addresses their expressed aspirations for the future and the different factors that influence these decisions (institutional, by specific educational agents, family, and personal). Based on a survey of 2500 students from 25 schools in the city of Santiago, it is concluded that the vocational decision process that occurs in the school stage is not homogeneous and, in most cases, is conditioned by an institutional model that offers few choice alternatives for young students.
... Critics also argue that ignoring structure masks variation in youth's sense of agency and in their ability to exert agency in the sense of having the capacity to plan, and that youth's expectations of happiness and success are shaped by poverty, educational and occupational resources, and collectivist orientations (Brannen & Nilsen, 2002;Sletten, 2011). Even studies supporting individualization theory find that some groups of young adults, including those who are "multiply stressed", "non-trendsetters", or "privileged learners", do not plan, whether from a lack of resources, limited options, or a sense of ontological security (Anderson et al., 2005;Brooks & Everett, 2008;du Bois-Reymond, 1998). Nilsen (2002, 2005) argued that planning and choice are also influenced by time perspective, as planning occurs among individuals who have a "predictability" time orientation that involves collectivist traditions with well-established pathways to adulthood, while choice is associated with an "adaptability" orientation among those privileged with enough educational and occupational resources to envision themselves creating their own destiny and overcoming challenges. ...
Article
This article examines children and youth’s future orientation in rural Guatemala by examining their reports of activities of adults and children in present and future households. A total of 690 students in a small town in highland Guatemala completed a household task attribution form that listed 29 tasks in seven domains (domestic chores, care for children, household decisions, responsibilities, household purchases, work for money, development) with four gendered household figures (man, woman, boy, girl). Using cultural consensus analysis, we analyze patterns of agreement and variation in responses to determine the existence of shared cultural models and gendered submodels in both time periods. Taking a gendered and intergenerational relationality perspective, we focus on the ways that future orientations reflect, (re)produce, and contest contemporary gender norms. Reports of task distributions in the present reflect “traditional” gender norms divided along “productive” and “reproductive” lines. While male participants’ conceptions of the future largely reproduced these structures, female participants appeared willing to increase their own domestic work to foster greater gender equality among their children.
... Although many studies suggested parental encouragement has a positive effect on students' motivation, academic achievement, and educational aspirations [52][53][54] Students' final decisions and educational destinations are not always static but in flux with their personal interests, their job prospects, and their HKDSE results. Students should be able to comprehend and analyze the individual and familial constraints in education and career choices [55]. At the same time, students ought to understand the opportunities and limitations of each, so as to be emotionally well prepared for facing any positive or negative changes in the future. ...
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Understanding the academic and career aspirations of adolescents and their destinations could inform policy makers and educators about how best to provide support at society and school levels to facilitate adolescents transitioning from school to further education and work. The current qualitative study investigates seven senior secondary students from three schools with varying intakes of student ability under the “Secondary School Places Allocation System” in Hong Kong. By employing a Systems Theory Framework, the study looked into the academic and career aspirations of these students and tracked their destinations immediately after secondary school graduation. Findings show that the academic and career aspirations of adolescents and their destinations are shaped by prevailing preferences for attaining higher qualifications, preferably a bachelor’s degree, parental and others’ influences, and outcomes of public examination results. The implications of enhancing support for the societal, school, and career- and life-planning education of individuals are discussed.
... Undergraduate students are at a specific stage of a life-course. In anticipation of the future, young, traditional undergraduate students often engage in a form of 'life-planning' (Brooks & Everett, 2008;Giddens, 1991;Hockey, 2009). In these intensely youthful spaces, messages about appropriate career choices are (re)produced via careers and employability curricula as part of degrees and bespoke career services and, crucially through informal learning between students. ...
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This paper examines young women university students’ expectations of gender inequalities in the workplace, drawing upon semi-structured interviews with 21 young women at three mid-high ranking universities. Our original findings show that the young women were factoring-in expectations of the gendered workplace as a backdrop to their career choices and life-planning. Critically, these young women are relatively privileged and educationally successful, yet are framing their career choices in light of expectations of gendered constraints. We label this phenomenon the ‘mirrored ceiling’, as these expectations are reflected back onto young women’s current experiences and life-mapping. Crucially, these pervasive understandings of gendered workplaces and career trajectories were transpiring at a critical moment when young women are making crucial choices about their careers and life-courses. The specific environment of the university is a pivotal space of formal and informal learning, and the circulation, sharing and (re)production of the mirrored ceiling. This is also a key moment in time and space when career services, and specific industries could intervene in proactive ways to demonstrate how gender inequalities are being challenged. This paper therefore uncovers an important, and previously overlooked factor influencing gendered career pathways, which needs addressing by careers services and broader university practices.
... Propensity toward future life planning does not function equally among young adults (Brooks & Everett, 2008). In fact, those who were privileged enough to attend top ranked programs and universities were not as interested in formulating and following a life plan as much as the others. ...
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Il COVID-19 non ha solo causato diffusi disagi emotivi sotto forma di paura, depressione e ansia, ma ha anche generato una crisi economica globale. Se la maggior parte di noi potrebbe interpretare la parola "economia" da una prospettiva macroeconomica, come definita da Adam Smith (1904), però altri eminenti autori e studiosi, come spiegato nel contributo, ne hanno adottato una definizione centrata sulla persona. Nel presentare entrambi gli approcci, il contributo adotterà le definizioni di economie centrate sulla persona e le amplierà introducendo un nuovo Framework, chiamato Self-Science, per facilitare la comprensione delle componenti legate al self-awareness con lo scopo di perseguire e perfezionare il self-mastery.
... For such graduatesmental health abidingbehind the scenes support may well come into play and prop them up down the line. A more buoyant manifestation of the language of fate is granted by such forms of financial support which enable a resilience to withstand crises and carry on to new opportunities on the back of adversity (Allen, 2016;Brooks & Everett, 2008;Friedman & Laurison, 2019). However wretched Stella's situation of temporarily dropping out of university, the money made available for rehabilitation and re-entry to college to achieve graduation before now living across the country with her own car un-burdened by debt (and without others to look after) represent a 'turnaround' that is worlds apart from the many people in New York City who have a problem with alcohol or drugs. ...
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This article presents ethnographic research on the aspirations of graduates from a private university in New York City, some of whom move to Los Angeles. Findings depict financial and family pressures exerting a governing force upon the graduates’ futures, often beyond their control. Focusing on the narratives of four individuals, we introduce the language of fate as a means of conceptualising the potential repercussions of aspiration and Higher Education. The premise of both is an increased determinacy over one’s future, yet in the high-stakes U.S. context here examined, this financial investment and articulation of family hope may generate fated (seemingly inescapable) and/or fateful (ominous) outcomes. The dynamic of ‘cruel optimism’ illustrates some of the paradoxical consequences of Higher Education, whereby people may be punished by their aspirations. We discuss what factors affect differing outlooks on the future and imply alternative dimensions to adversity beyond the remit of ‘inequality’.
... On the other hand, scholars also commonly acknowledge that the years and experiences abroad can fundamentally transform the worldviews of students, often leading to aspirations of international careers or global/transnational mobility (Gomes, 2015;Mohajeri Norris & Gillespie, 2009;Lin & Kingminghae, 2018). Even in cases where this aspiration for transnational mobility has long been there and studying abroad is just the first step (Brooks & Everett, 2008;Findlay, King, Smith, Geddes & Skeldon, 2012), the people international students meet and bond with at foreign educational institutions can help realize their goals of working or living abroad (Waters & Leung, 2013). Simply put, international graduates can become more internationally mobile at heart and in practice. ...
Article
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International education and onward mobility of international graduates often involve strategies of economic units. This paper contributes to this line of research by examining how post-study migration plans of international students can be geared toward achieving strategic goals of family businesses. Based on survey data among Thais studying in Chinese universities, we find that those with a family business background show a clear intention of short-term sojourn; however, when they are at elite universities or graduate schools, or have ethnic-language links with the host country, chances of leaving immediately upon graduation increase significantly. We argue that their particular mobility patterns may involve business-oriented families’ efforts to balance the two strategic goals across borders: succession and internationalization. The present paper calls for a closer look into the particular situations of families to deepen the understanding of international student mobility.
... However, it has also been argued that as more young people obtain degrees, the goalposts are shifting through 'credential inflation' (Brooks and Everett 2008). When the numbers of graduates increase, having a degree ceases to be a mark of distinction and competitive labour markets demand additional qualifications such as unpaid internships (Leonard, Halford, and Bruce 2015). ...
Article
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There is growing international interest in young people’s post-compulsory education pathways. In contexts of ‘widening participation’ as university is increasingly ‘normalised’, how do young people choose alternative routes into training and employment? While in Britain apprenticeships are a key aspect of government strategy, there are many challenges still associated with these schemes including low pay and inconsistent training. Drawing on longitudinal data from our qualitative research with young people on apprenticeship schemes in London, we use narrative analysis, informed by Goffman’s theory of stigma, to explore how young people narrate and navigate the tensions between apprenticeships as opportunities to ‘learn while they earn’ and university degrees as the prevailing ‘gold standard’ of achievement and future success. Our findings show that while these young people were aware of the challenges associated with apprenticeships, they used specific rhetorical devices to reclaim the normalcy of their training pathways as ‘sensible’ and ‘mature’ choices.
... Prices for private schools range widely, with cheaper schools attracting poorer Nigerians, particularly in Lagos state, where "12,098 private schools cater to 57% of the state's enrolled children." 13 A child may be fostered to relatives who are better educated than the parents in the belief that the child's prospects will be improved by the adopters' education and professional status (e.g., as a banker, teacher, or government official). 14 In this sense, geographic mobility for education, whether local or transnational, is seen as key to ensuring social mobility and fulfilling an array of other aspirations (Brooks and Everett 2008). ...
Article
West Africans have a long history of investing in their children's education by sending them to Britain. Yet, some young British-Nigerians are being sent to Nigeria for secondary education, going against a long historical grain. The movement of children from London to Nigeria is about the making of good subjects who possess particular cultural dispositions and behave in such a manner as to ensure educational success and the reproduction of middle-class subjectivities within neoliberal globalization. We maintain that this movement highlights the way in which global geographies of power—rooted in a colony-metropole divide—are being challenged and reconfigured, serving to provincialize the UK, through the educational choices that Nigerian parents make for their children. Such small acts disrupt imagined geographies and particular spatial and temporal configurations of progress and modernity, in which former colonial subjects have traveled to the metropole for education, while generating counter-narratives about Nigerian education, society, and economy. Yet, the methods used to instill new dispositions and habits in the contemporary Nigerian educational context are informed by the British educational colonial legacy of discipline through corporal punishment—physical punishment was central to the civilizing mission of British colonial educational policy. Consequently, the choice to send children to school in Nigeria and other African countries both challenges global geographies of power and illuminates the continued relevance of the colonial educational legacy and its disciplinary strategies, which are, in turn, part of the broader project of modernity itself.
... Yet the links between student mobility and post-study migration have been given little attention. Along with engaging with current debates on student propensities for life planning ( Brooks and Everett 2008), this paper seeks to deepen understanding of the relationship between international student mobility and subsequent mobilities. One of our original contributions to the topic is in showing how the geography of what happens during international study matters in renegotiating this relationship. ...
Article
International student mobility has mainly been theorised in terms of cultural capital accumulation and its prospective benefits on returning home following graduation. Yet, despite a growing body of work in this area, most research on post-study mobility fails to recognise that the social forces that generate international student mobility also contribute to lifetime mobility plans. Moreover, these forces produce at least four types of post-study destination, of which returning ‘home’ is only one option. Our findings challenge the idea that a circular trajectory is necessarily the ‘desired’ norm. In line with wider migration theory, we suggest that return may even be seen as failure. Instead we advance the idea that cultural and social capital acquired through international studies is cultivated for onward mobility and may be specifically channelled towards goals such as an international career. We contribute a geographically nuanced conceptual frame for understanding the relation between international student mobility and lifetime mobility aspirations. By building on studies that highlight the role of family and social networks in international student mobility, we illustrate how influential familial and social institutions – both in the place of origin and newly encountered abroad – underpin and complicate students’ motivations, mobility aspirations and life planning pre- and post-study. We argue for a fluidity of life plans and conclude by discussing how geographies of origin matter within students’ lifetime mobility plans.
... 53). Given the more automatic decision to attend, upper-and middle-class students are thus likely to have more time to select a university that better suits them, consolidating the advantages stemming from the guidance mechanisms already available to them (Brooks and Everett, 2008). In contrast, working-class students who decide to attend university face differing constraints. ...
Article
This thesis consists of three stand-alone papers, each of which assesses a policy incentive that might alter the socio-economic gap in university enrollment in England; these incentives are encouragement, grade labels, and money, respectively. The rationale for examining these influences comes from a diverse range of theoretical backgrounds. In contrast, the analytical procedure used in each paper comes from the same empirical tradition, namely the Neyman-Rubin causal model, which quantifies the impact of a given incentive by determining counterfactual scenarios to estimate the difference in outcomes stemming from either the absence or the presence of a given incentive. As a set, these chapters demonstrate the multi-faceted nature of inequalities in access to higher education. By working from varied theoretical traditions, I provide evidence for a range of conceptualizations of behavior and influencing factors. My emphasis on socio-economic class disparities should not mask the fact that there are numerous sources of disadvantage that are likely to act in mutually dependent and re-enforcing ways. Yet, even when focusing on a single element of inequality, my findings demonstrate that many factors play a role in shaping disparities.
... We expect more elite migrants to be more likely to want to return home or move to a third country, whereas more middling migrants are more likely to use international education as a path to residency in the UK. Those who report 'don't know' may be more elite, reflecting a rejection among the elite of life planning (Brooks and Everett, 2008). ...
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Student migrants from former sending regions now form a substantial share of non-EU migration flows to Europe. These flows represent the convergence of extensive internationalisation of higher education with increasing restrictions on family and labour migration. This paper provides the first examination of student migrants’ early socio-cultural and structural integration by following recently arrived Pakistani students in London over an 18 month period. We use latent class analysis to identify both elite and two ‘middling’ types – middle class and network-driven – within our student sample. We then ask whether these types experience different early sociocultural and structural integration trajectories in the ways that the elite and middling transnational literatures would suggest. We find differences in structural, but less in socio-cultural outcomes. We conclude that to understand the implications of expanding third country student migration across the EU, it is important to recognize both the distinctiveness of this flow and its heterogeneity.
... The futures may be considered as a partly controllable portfolio of opportunities (Anderson et al. 2005) or as a structured mixture of several temporal orientations in a social process with significant others (Woodman 2011). If one has control over one's own future, for example through competence, detailed planning becomes unnecessary (Brooks and Everett 2008). The past and the present as a context have a significant effect on how young people think about the future (Brannen and Nilsen 2007). ...
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Demographic trends do not give much hope for rural regions in developed economies. Many studies prescribe rural futures as manifestations of consumption of the countryside by an urban majority. However, many of these macro-images and typologies lack explicit micro-agency. This article illustrates what are the expectations from personal futures in rural areas, where specifically and by whom. The respondents of a national survey represented the Finnish youth, who described their dream future in 2030 in terms of livelihood, accommodation and lifestyle recipe. Analysis of the dreams resulted in distinct regional profiles. Urban-adjacent rural areas are profiled as places for a cosy life with spacious housing, home-based activities, nature, privacy and commuting. Rural centres (villages and parishes) had a comparative advantage in small-scale life. The advantage is related to benefits of smallness and economies of proximity: communality, safety and societal involvement. Self-made life attracted the youth to remote rural areas along with opportunities for entrepreneurship, pluriactivity and nature-related activities. Those of rural origin and a higher age increased the probability of rural destinations in the dreams. The effectiveness of rural, regional and municipal development policy could potentially benefit significantly by providing direct responses to the dreams of the youth, based on the research contributions which profile regions for the future at this level of abstraction.
... To some extent the individuals quoted above can be viewed as traditional 'life planners' (Brooks and Everett, 2008) who aspire and plan to follow linear transitions from education to employment. They had made an active decision to pursue a particular pathway at university in order to maximise their future success in a challenging graduate labour market. ...
Article
Internships are now widely promoted as a valuable means of enhancing graduate employability. However, little is known about student perceptions of internships. Drawing on data from a pre-1992 university, two types of graduate are identified: engagers and disengagers. The engagers valued internship opportunities while the disengagers perceived these roles as exploitative and worthless. Few were able to distinguish paid, structured internship opportunities from unpaid, exploitative roles. We conclude that higher education institutes need to be more proactive in extolling the value of paid internships to all students and not just those most likely to engage with their services.
... However, it is a counterargument that the IB is intrinsically about acquiring a cosmopolitan identity (Beck, 2004) rather than a ticket to academic and professional success. The IB and its favorability for ISM then becomes not just a means to an end but part of a person's international outlook throughout their entire lives (Brooks & Everett, 2008). At the same time, it should be noted that approximately half of all IB schools around the world are public sector schools. ...
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Report by the Education Policy Unit at the Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong
... However, it is a counterargument that the IB is intrinsically about acquiring a cosmopolitan identity (Beck, 2004) rather than a ticket to academic and professional success. The IB and its favorability for ISM then becomes not just a means to an end but part of a person's international outlook throughout their entire lives (Brooks & Everett, 2008). At the same time, it should be noted that approximately half of all IB schools around the world are public sector schools. ...
... Recognizing the importance of studying future mobility as an important transitional node broadly falls within a growing literature on young people and the future that has expanded in recent years. European case studies within this field include those conducted by Lindgren (2010), Pais (2003), Nilsen (1999), Skrbis, Woodward, and Bean (2014), Taylor and Addison (2009), Threadgold (2012), Nilsen (2002, 2007), Cops, Pleysier, and Put (2012) and Brooks and Everett (2008). 1 This body of work allows us to situate our work within youth transitions research. This tradition has also already grappled with the importance of forms of mobility that have merely been 'anticipated', but are not necessarily factual. ...
Article
In the context of the ‘iFuture’ research project, 341 18-year-old Sardinian students were asked to write an essay in which they imagined themselves at 90 and described what their futures (in the past) would look like. Such data allow us to investigate the notion of agency. Agency and the future are deeply intertwined: agency involves the idea of projection and implies anticipation; the ‘desired’ futures have an impact on the ways in which youth act in the world today. We focus on the analysis of one of the emerging findings, which expresses an interesting configuration of youth agency, namely the imagination of youth mobility. This finding expresses the desire to put some projects into place, yet it concurrently implies that youth believe that these projects are impossible to achieve in the current context. After offering an overview of imagined destinations, we identify two ways in which imagined mobility emerges from the rich material collected: (a) mobility as an entry ticket, to bypass the uncertainty associated with crude reality and (b) mobility as an occasion for self-experimentation and self-growth. We conclude by discussing in what ways these forms of imagined future mobilities may be seen as youth agency.
... The futures may be considered as a partly controllable portfolio of opportunities (Anderson et al., 2005) or as a structured mixture of several temporal orientations in a social process with significant others (Woodman, 2011). If one has control over one's own future, for example through competence, detailed planning becomes unnecessary (Brooks and Everett, 2008). The past and the present as a context have a significant effect on how young people think about the future (Brannen and Nilsen, 2007). ...
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This study presents four possible images of rural futures in Finland: decentralized bio-economy, colonial countryside, museum countryside and rural business islets. They are distilled through literature reviews, futures workshops and futures tables. Alternative specifications of structures, contents and agencies result in highly divergent states of key dimensions and, consequently, divergent rural futures. This diversity challenges the conventional public wisdom or intellectual monoculture that considers decay as the only future for rural areas. Key challenges in crafting plausible but divergent futures images are finding an appropriate level of abstraction or "flight altitude", establishing a credible logic or model for the system of futures, defining roles for the agency and applying a proper balance between imagination and discipline. This study provides one example for tackling these challenges. It can be utilized to stimulate ideas of using futures images as a social technology or tool for social learning about alternative rural futures. This intellectual perch is an antidote for intellectual monocultures tending to dismiss the diversity of the rural areas.
... Some contributions point out the role of identities when people are deciding whether to go to university and in their perceptions about the competition for jobs. They also emphasise that an individual's perception of the labour market is not solely based on future earnings, but their life history, class, gender, ethnicity and background mediate their choices (for example, Reay et al. 2001;Smetherham 2006;Brooks and Everett 2008). ...
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Traditionally theorists who have written about agency and structure have eschewed empirical research. This article uses the findings of an empirical study into graduate employability to inform the sociological debate on how they relate to each other. The study examined how Dutch and British final-year students approach the labour market right before they graduate. The study revealed that the labour market and education structures are mirrored in how students understand and act within the labour market. It also showed that the interplay between agency and structure is mediated by an intersubjective framework shared by other students. The article argues that previous theoretical views on employability have failed to understand this and suggests how to improve our understanding of agency and structure.
... The interviews, particularly those conducted with the most privileged individuals, display the 'playful seriousness' that Bourdieu (1984) invokes when he says: 'one has to belong to the ranks of those who have been able, not necessarily to make their whole existence a sort of children's game, but at least to maintain for a long time, sometimes a whole lifetime, a child's relation to the world. ' (54) Our findings correspond to those of Brooks and Everett (2008) in their work on the incidence of 'life planning' amongst graduates in the UK. They review several studies about young adults' propensity to plan and note the differences that emerged 'by social position' (326)whereas privileged individuals would seem to design their lives in some detail, those from socially disadvantaged backgrounds would eschew such planning. ...
Article
To date, scholarship on international students has generally focused on flows from non‐western economies to the main English‐speaking destination countries (such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia). In contrast, we draw on a qualitative study of 85 UK students who have either completed or are considering undertaking a degree programme overseas. We found that, in opposition to a common image of ‘international students’, UK students are not overtly motivated by ‘strategic’ concerns. Instead, they are seeking ‘excitement’ and ‘adventure’ from overseas study and often use the opportunity to delay the onset of a career and prolong a relatively carefree student lifestyle. Despite these ostensibly ‘disinterested’ objectives, however, UK students remain a highly privileged group and their experiences serve only to facilitate the reproduction of their privilege. The paper calls for a more critical analysis of the spatially uneven and socially exclusive nature of international higher education.
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The articulation of research questions has not received as much attention in qualitative methodology literature as the other parts of the research design. The standard approaches to the interplay of theory use with posing research questions have focused on researchers’ reflexivity and problematization of previous theories. In this article I put forward an argument on how the development of research questions in qualitative research can lead to theorizing by proposing a methodological framework for remedying the drawbacks of these approaches. I suggest three modes of theory use (testing, refining and developing) which, through their intersection with three types of research objectives (exploration, refining and explanation) lead to four types of advancing research questions each of which is related to a particular cluster of sampling schemes. An additional part of the argument is that abduction frames both the first two types which are oriented to exploration as well as the last two which concern explanation.
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Artikkelissa tarkastellaan kokemusta koskevan tieteellisen tiedon mahdollisuutta. Ei ole itsestään selvää, mitä kokemus tai kokemuksellisuus on. Olkoonpa kokemus millaista tahansa, tieto siitä on välitettävä kielen avulla; eri kielet näkevät asiat kuitenkin monin tavoin. Suurin ongelma on se, että kokemus on subjektiivista, mutta tieteen ideaali objektiivisuus. Tähän münchhausenilaiseen ongelmaan on kirjallisuudessa tarjottu ratkaisuksi reliabiliteetin ja validiteetin käsitteitä. Tieteellisen tiedon objektiivisuuden mittana pidetään sen reliabiliteettia ja validiteettia, luotettavuutta ja pätevyyttä. Artikkelissa pohditaan näiden käsitteiden soveltamista kokemusta koskevaan tietoon ja sen hankkimiseen. Johtopäätöksenä esitetään, että vaikka näiden ihanteiden perimmäisen luonteen ymmärtämisessä on vielä paljon työtä, niitä ei pidä heittää kokonaan menemään, sillä tieteellisen tiedon luotettavuuden ja pätevyyden varmistaminen on olennaisesti myös tutkimusetiikan varmistamista.
Technical Report
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Amid the backdrop of rapid change and uncertainty of AI, technological change and COVID-19, the focus of this report is how young adults make plans and what expectations they have in relation to their working futures and lifelong learning. This research report draws upon quantitative and qualitative data from Life Patterns, a mixed methods longitudinal panel study of Australian youth who left school in 2006. The findings for this research report are drawn from survey data collected in 2020 from participants of Cohort 2 in the Life Patterns project, who were aged 32 years in that year.
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In the UK, transition to university has become regarded as the ‘normative’ next step for young people following completion of their post-16 education. This paper examines the views of 23 young people who, despite being suitably qualified to progress to university, were anticipating alternative pathways and options. The paper illuminates the centrality of young people’s ‘learning identities’ in their decisions and the role of wider social contexts in structuring their opportunities to embark on higher education. Their ‘learning identities’ informed their views on the value of higher education and other options in securing future employment. The implications of these findings are highly significant in the context of congested and competitive UK labour markets in which obtaining a degree has become, in very many contexts, the bare minimum for securing employment.
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The ability to plan effectively has been reported to have a positive effect on one’s life satisfaction, sense of direction, and future positive experiences. As emerging adults begin to discover what they want to be, they must also choose what kind of career they will pursue. The current perspective on career development views planning one’s career as a part of one’s larger life planning. Surprisingly, research examining how planning contributes to one’s presence of purpose and career is still lacking. The aim of this research is to assess the effect of planning on one’s career calling and purpose. The results show that planning positively predicted the presence of purpose and living out one’s career calling. Planning was not a significant predictor of the search for purpose, while the search for purpose negatively predicted the presence of purpose.
Chapter
The notion of futurity has captured attention in the sociology of youth since the beginning of the sub-discipline. In recent decades scholarship in this area has been dominated by a host of typologies seeking to capture the differing ways in which young people orient themselves to the future (e.g. Brannen and Nilsen 2002). While this work has added nuance to existing debates, it nevertheless tends towards a vision of young people as individualised. Moreover, while it has considered the role of institutional attachments in forming young people’s orientations to the future, until recently it has attended comparatively less to the significance of their wider social context. In this chapter we build on scholarship that has begun to consider how young people’s orientations to the future are shaped by significant others (Woodman 2011) and by the wider social context in which they are situated (Cuzzocrea and Mandich 2016; Cook 2018b). Young people’s orientations to the future provide important insights into the nature of the new adulthood, as successive generations build their lives under conditions that previous generations did not know. We draw specifically on longitudinal qualitative data in order to illustrate what stands to be gained by attending to future thinking in this way. In so doing we contend that the way forward in debates concerning youth and futurity lies not in sharpening categorical depictions of future orientations, but in shifting towards a holistic approach to the future that is capable of accounting for individuals’ embeddedness in both their immediate social relationships and their wider imagined communities.
Article
Contemporary Korean hip-hop has made its way into the mainstream of youth culture, and Korea’s hip-hop scene has emerged as a significant social space in which the voices of the young generation resonate vividly. When compared with the rest of their cohort, emblematized as the so-called ‘Give-up Generation’, the optimism of rappers provides a fascinating subject for exploration. In order to answer the question of why young Korean rappers profess their dreams in the age of no-hope, we interviewed six underground rappers, delving particularly into the following two themes. First is the inquiry into the rappers’ logic of hip-hop practices, under the conceptual rubric of ‘remaking authenticity’. We found that by inventing their own figurative ghettos and symbolically becoming black, they actively reinvent Korean hip-hop authenticity. Second is the inquiry into the principle of their practices. Our findings show that the fundamental motor force which drives them consists of their aspiration for a better future. The dreams of these rappers derive from three distinct sources. The first source is the illusio (Bourdieu) of the Korean hip-hop field; the second source is the musical form of hip-hop itself; the final source is the communities of dreamers to which the rappers belong.
Chapter
Despite the reference to the neologism of ant tribes, which refers to low-income university graduates living a poverty-level existence in the cities of China, warnings such as this have resounded in the public, policy and scholarly fields for many years now. Concerns about young people’s ‘mortgaged futures’ (Kelly 2017, p. 57) were amplified in the wake of the GFC, with its grim immediate and downstream effects on young people’s labour market participation, as well as on their life chances beyond that. They are now accelerating again in response to the kinds of uncertainties which we have described in the Introduction and which include mutable and precarious labour markets; strained or reformed social fabrics; unsettled economic presents and prospects; deepened inequality and threats to social justice and cohesion; the destabilisation of political orthodoxies; environmental and planetary change; and a deep challenge to the certainties of human life.
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Introduction. The attractiveness of the city as a place to live and fulfill needs becomes one of the determining factors for the intensification of territorial mobility among young people. The image of the city and the image of the “future” are closely related and interdependent in consciousness of young people. Megalopolis as a high-resource territory is a special space for the implementation of students’ life plans. Hence, it is important to pay special attention to students as a potential driver for the development of the territory (city, region, country), creating an attractive urban environment. Aim. Taking into account the results of a sociological study, the aims of the publication were the following: to analyse the attractiveness of the city, to characterise its place in the life planning of students and to determine the role in territorial movements. Methodology and research methods. The empirical basis of the study was a semi-standardised questionnaire for students of 3–4 courses at 9 universities in Ekaterinburg (n = 200), and in-depth interviews with students representing different types of orientations to territorial mobility (n = 8). Collected data were processed by means of a method of thematic networks. Results and scientific novelty. According to respondents, the factors, which provide comfort of life in the city, are considered; competitive advantages and shortcomings of the environment of the megalopolis are characterised; it is shown how its specific characteristics are reflected in vital plans of students. Two idealised ideas of the city as the place for life are allocated: 1) a “comfortable” city for everyday practices and open for innovations and creativity; 2) an “instrumental” city as the platform for career development and material welfare, which can be emotionally unattractive, but functionally effective. The factor constraining territorial mobility is the reproduction of social connections and relations in the current residence area; students view the movement as a type of risky behaviour. However, 42% of respondents include in their life plans a move to another city, located both in Russia and abroad. In the motivational structure of territorial mobility, the leading positions are occupied by the desire for independence, the idealised image of the city planned for life, and the discrepancy between the conditions of a particular city and the actual needs of the young generation. Hence, the strategic direction of planning and designing urban space is the increase in the socio-cultural, economic, and environmental sustainability of the territory. Administrative structures as the agents, initiating, introducing and regulating the complex strategy of increase in attractiveness of the territory, need to consider not only the territorial capital, which the megalopolis has, but also typical needs and interests of the target social groups, especially those related to the creative class. Practical significance. The presented materials and the authors’ conclusions can be used to determine the priority directions of the development of urban environment and intra-urban youth policy and to develop programmes for forming students’ competencies related to life planning and territorial mobility.
Thesis
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Young people's engagement with social network sites have predominantly been depicted in binary ways, overplaying either the risks posed by digital technologies or their positive benefits. Adopting a critical perspective, this thesis understands young people’s uses and perceptions of social network sites as continuously negotiated and deeply entrenched in their everyday lives; and analyses them within the social struggles and power structures in which they are embedded. Based on qualitative interview material with 32 young adults aged 20-25 and on an innovative research design incorporating digital prompts, this study explores the meanings that participants ascribed to social network sites and their everyday uses of the platforms. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of practice and Foucault’s work on power and governmentality, the thesis argues that young people actively negotiate social network sites. Yet their uses and understandings of the platforms are constituted through a 'practical knowledge' of the world which reflects existing social divisions and, are embedded within broader neoliberal narratives of entrepreneurship, choice and responsibility, producing corresponding forms of governmentality. Throughout the interviews, participants described their engagement with social network sites, for example their attitudes towards privacy or the ways in which they managed and maintained relationships through the platforms, in terms of individual choice, personal preference and growing up. The analysis of the data suggests, that their engagement were, nonetheless, substantially informed by the economic interests and the monopolies enforced by private corporations; by the technological affordances and playful designs of the platforms; by social processes of differentiation rendering specific uses legitimate; and by neoliberal discourses encouraging individual responsibility and understandings of the self as enterprise. All of the above combined to actively shape and produce participants' understandings of social network sites as 'useful' and 'necessary' tools for managing the everyday and their relationships, for maximising professional opportunities, and for engaging in practices of profile-checking and monitoring. In short, the thesis argues that young people's uses and understandings of social network sites are complex and cannot be reduced to risks or positive leverage, nor can it be understood without an analysis of the asymmetrical relations of powers between private corporations which own the platforms and users, and a critical engagement with the pervasive neoliberal discourses that shape them.
Chapter
Studying young people’s relationship with the future enables us to explore a number of strategic issues that concern their lives and their representations of the social world, their trust in institutions, and their processes of identity construction. Moreover, given the strategic importance of the future in the construction of biographical time, reflecting on this topic gives us an opportunity to explore the current changes in youth as a life stage. In this context, this chapter sets out to understand how this relationship has been influenced by the Great Recession; in particular, whether the increase in social precariousness and the uncertainty linked to it has forced young people to redefine their aspirations and, on a more general level, influenced their capacity for agency. To do this the chapter examines the results of an international survey on youth and the future carried out in 2008, at the beginning of the recession. Second, it analyzes the results of various qualitative studies conducted between 2012 and 2014 in different European countries. The analysis carried out highlights how young people’s relationship with the future during the recession differs according to the area in which they live, their position in the world of work, and their different economic, social, and cultural backgrounds. It should, however, be underlined that the bleak outlook offered by the future does not automatically translate into fatalism and resignation. By inventing new “temporal practices,” some young people are attempting to forge a positive relationship with the future, something that also translates into forms of social and political participation.
Article
This paper extends interdisciplinary research into young people’s experiences of studying abroad. Whilst there is ample evidence for the growing significance of international student mobility in shaping young people’s identities and future life chances, few efforts have been made to account for the perspectives of young people who have no first-hand experiences of travelling abroad. Building on the concept of imaginative geographies, this paper flips around the analytical lens used to explore representations of international student mobility and develops a nuanced understanding of the ways in which mass-mediated images and discourses shape understandings of self and others. Drawing on field research conducted with Nepali university students in Kathmandu, the first part of the analysis makes evident that a greater degree of global connectivity between young people studying at home and abroad does not necessarily translate into a fuller understanding of distant places and people, as these connections are always underpinned by local status hierarchies. The second part of the analysis calls attention to the various ways in which dominant imaginaries of mobility and place are being internalised and reworked differently depending on people’s social identities and their lived experiences. The findings presented in this paper therefore contribute to broader debates in geographical research on the uneven power relations that underpin mobility practices and shape people’s identities in an interconnected world.
Chapter
This chapter summarises the findings presented in the book, using them to address the research questions presented in Chap. 1: (1) how do individuals imagine the future of their society? (2) Do individuals’ imaginings of the long-term future interact with or impact upon the ways in which they relate to the short-term, biographical future? And (3) are the ways in which individuals relate to the long-term future compatible with popular theoretical accounts of the contemporary future horizon? The implications that these finding may have for both the sociology of risk and uncertainty and broader research considering environmental issues and pro-environmental behaviour are considered. Finally, the book concludes by contending that the long-term, societal future is of both relevance and concern for individuals in their everyday lives.
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Life planning has gathered momentum in different aspects of education. The discussions are centered on the foci of education and the ways to enrich students' learning experience for acquisition of transferable skills, together with the methods of training them to be future leaders of society, of facilitating their personal development, and of constructing appropriate values of life. Life planning is a process of lifelong learning. Serious but flexible life planning in one's childhood brings different advantages to the student (Hellevik & Settersten Jr, 2013), thereby reducing the anxiety due to the uncertainty and ambiguity of life. Teachers and parents, who play an influential role in the personal growth of the next generation, should encourage students to be responsible for their own lives and future, instruct them to develop self-esteem, confidence, and respect for other people, and help them to cultivate good habits and positive learning attitude. Life planning in the West is often considered to be a long-term measure to solve problems of education, career, and social structure (see European Communities, 1994).
Article
Everyone has areas of professional practice that they feel comfortable with. But, what if they lack knowledge and skills in a particular area? The traditional didactic teacher-centred method of continuing education involves attending lectures. In this situation, it is likely a person will attend those in areas that they are competent but may avoid or neglect those areas which may be an educational challenge or 'threat'. Reflection with an educational mentor (an educational appraisal) can lead to identification of learning or development needs and should form the basis for a personal development plan (PDP). Adult learners have the responsibility for organising their own learning and writing a PDP or action plan and this should be the basis of their continuing professional development (CPD). PDPs are about meeting individual needs, but also the needs of the workplace. PDPs may be viewed by some in educational terms as learning contracts with agreed educational 'targets' and they can form the basis of a portfolio or educational diary. We are all learners from 'cradle to grave' and during our education move from 'teacher-centred' directed learning of a carefully defined curriculum to self-directed 'learner-centred' learning. It is all too easy to become professionally isolated and bored through the routinisation and repetitiveness of the job. Planned CPD by writing a PDP can prevent the 'autopilot syndrome' that leads to stress and burnout and so increase morale and empower an individual organizationally and to evolve their job and career goals. A simple PDP proforma is demonstrated.
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Time and space are central to youth research. Transitions research investigates the movement from one status to another and often from one place to another. Cultural youth research investigates the symbolic practices of young people, practices that necessarily unfold over time and involve engagements in place and across space. This chapter introduces the most pressing temporal-spatial questions for youth research and the work in youth studies that addresses time and space. The chapter finishes by addressing the challenges for future research in this area. Conceptualizing time and space, and in particular the relationship between the two, will be important to youth researchers’ efforts to understand the increasingly global interaction of youth cultural practices, political movements, and forms of inequality.
Article
Recent scholarly research has claimed that young people are predominantly concerned with their immediate ‘horizon of planning’, resulting in an outlook upon the future that is dominated by present-day concerns. By distinguishing between choices and plans, on the one hand, and hope and faith, on the other, this article analyses how young people relate to the future through their attitudes about responsibility and technology in order to complicate this narrative. The data are drawn from an interview project in which 28 young adults (aged 18–34) discuss both their own future and a general idea of the future of society. Two key findings are discussed. Firstly, respondents are found to place faith in the potential of technology to mitigate future predicaments, and secondly, respondents are found to ascribe mystical or magical qualities to technology. Drawing on these findings, this article suggests that the oft-cited attitude that technology will develop in time to meet the needs of the future does not simply signify a deferral of responsibility onto future generations. Instead, by drawing on scholarship on re-enchantment it is argued that for young adults technological development can represent a refuge of faith and hope for the future.
Article
French colonialism resulted in the inclusion of large numbers of West Africans into French educational institutions. Furthermore, the Senegambian region has a long history of intermarriage with French citizens. This paper draws on this history to explore the interplay between migration, education and binational marriage over several generations of West African students, with a particular focus on Senegal. Students from Francophone countries continue to seek educational opportunities in France, but in recent years they have been increasingly affected by the tightening up of immigration policies. In this context, this paper suggests that marriage to a French spouse often plays an important role in the fulfilment of educational projects, and that this role is contingent on issues of gender and class. At times, however, tensions between marriage in France and social expectations back home end up compromising education altogether.
Chapter
One of the main rationales of the Erasmus programme, initiated in 1987, is the promotion of the European labour market. Nevertheless, empirical evidence on the links between student mobility, international labour mobility and employability remains relatively limited. In this chapter, I investigate how participation in an international exchange programme during students' higher education degree might have an impact on their future aspirations to live or work in an international context, based on an online survey conducted in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden and the United Kingdom (n = 10,831). The empirical analysis shows that there is little empirical evidence for a causal link between participation in the Erasmus programme and increased aspirations towards the international labour market in students' future career. The results indicate that those who participate in the Erasmus programme are already more inclined towards future geographical mobility and international jobs before participating.
Article
The study examines how students see their time at university as part of life and identity construction. The research data are based on a questionnaire administered to Finnish-speaking undergraduates at the University of Jyväskylä on the topic “How do you see your time as a student from the perspective of life construction?” A total of 283 students responded to the open-ended question on this topic. The data were analyzed using content analysis. Reflections on personal and professional identity predominated in the responses, as well as questions related to social relations and their construction. Very many students experienced their time studying as a positive period. In addition many students said that their thinking skills had developed during their time at university.
Article
This article explores the changing relationship between the ‘transitions’ and ‘cultural’ perspectives in youth studies. Changes in the relationship between the two approaches are currently being driven by shifting theoretical paradigms that place a greater weight on reflexive life management, thereby making it more difficult to maintain a theoretical distinction between structural and cultural analysis. Indeed, we argue that relationships between the two approaches are showing signs of convergence, partly as a consequence of the emergence of new ways of managing life contexts which frequently involve the blending of contexts, the search for new meanings and a changing sense of self in time. We trace the trends in the relationship between the ‘transitions’ and ‘cultural’ perspectives against the backdrop of changing opportunity structures. Focusing on contemporary contexts, we explore some of the ways in which recent socio-economic changes challenge traditional ways of interpreting subjectivities. We conclude by exploring the ways in which the sociology of youth can move forward using a social generation approach.
Article
This paper demonstrates the value of child-centred migration studies which highlight children’s role in shaping the migration journeys of their families, as well as their own projected journeyings. It examines the case of children from China who move to Singapore, an aspiring global education hub, expressly for the purpose of an overseas education that will facilitate longer-term migrationand life goals. Focus is given specifically to the children of ‘study mothers’ or peidu mama (literally: ‘mothers accompanying their children who are studying’). Through interviews with the teenagers and the conceptual optic of ‘social navigation’, our paper demonstrates that children are resilient and creative beings able to navigate the twists and turns of their immediate trajectories, as well as develop their own goals and projected destinations for their futures. The paper calls for a refinement in the way we understand children’s mobilities. First, in arguing that their spatial journeying across the terrains of transnational education cannot be decoupled from their process of social becoming and emotional development from passive followers to active negotiators, we wish to disrupt hegemonic discourses and dominant representations of children in migration as simply ‘migrant’s children’ and restore them to the status of ‘migrant children’. Second, adopting the concept of social navigation as an analytical lens allows us to highlight the fluid ways that young people think about their futures and the different pathways by which they can get there. This leads us to conceive of social and cultural capital accumulation through transnational education as a process with many more degrees of provisionality than what is often presented in the literature as a ‘strategic project’ with a fixed and abstract goal.
Article
This special issue of Advances in Life Course Research is dedicated to a demographic perspective on the transition to adulthood. In our view, there are at least two compelling reasons to do so. First, the current conceptualization of the transition to adulthood as mainly a subjective process in which young men and women gradually gain autonomy and responsibility, is at best one-sided. It is our contention that traditional markers – and ‘new’ markers like unmarried cohabitation – still constitute very important events in young people’s life course that significantly influence their future life chances and outcomes. Second, the field of major demographic events during the transition to adulthood itself offers so many substantive and methodological challenges that it is worthwhile to examine at least a number of them. In the remainder of this introductory article, we have three aims. First, we will try to substantiate our claim that studying demographic markers in young adulthood is still an important goal for life course studies. Second, we will discuss some of the substantive and methodological challenges that research in this area is facing. And third, we will discuss the contribution of the substantive articles in this special issue to these challenges.
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This article uses data from a survey of young adults in Kirkcaldy, Fife, together with associated qualitative interviews, to throw empirical light on their sense of control over their lives and their perceived willingness and ability to plan their lives. Its principal conclusion, contrary to the suggestions of much previous literature, is that a majority of young adults of both genders do, by their early twenties at least, feel in control of their lives and able to exercise forethought over quite long periods of time with respect to many aspects of their futures. Far from seeing the future as simply ‘an extended present’, they see active opportunities for choice and for formulating their own lives in the years ahead. Only a minority, predominantly those who feel themselves in particularly insecure circumstances, live primarily for the present or think ahead only or principally for the very short term.
Article
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The article examines three bodies of theory: individualization, the lifecourse, and concepts of time. It interrogates these theories with respect to the following questions: how young people speak about the future; and the bearing of young people's situations and time perspectives upon the way they envisage the transition to adulthood. It draws upon empirical research from a five-country European study, in particular material from focus group discussions conducted with young people in two west-European countries, Britain and Norway. It analyses variations in young peoples' ways of thinking about their future lives, and proposes, as a basis for further research, three ideal typical models.
Chapter
This chapter centres on the refashioning of young people’s transitions to adulthood and an associated reshaping of social identity in today’s world of rapid social change. In setting out the evidence, we draw upon Urry’s (1999) concept of ‘an increasingly borderless world’, transposing this theme to the micro-world of a particular segment of young people — A-level students living in a marginal locale in the north-east of England. Within this small universe, we adjust the lens to focus on these sixth-formers’ work, concentrating on three of the several intersecting social sites which young people in full-time schooling inhabit — education, the family and, increasingly, part-time employment (Hodgson and Spours, 2000; Mizen et al., 1999, 2001). For those in post-16 full-time education, a changing educational landscape and a pervasive work culture (Forrester, 1999) are redrawing and opening up the boundaries between these spheres of social life, and these forces in turn are driven by economic and technological change and the alleged need for flexibility in both labour markets and human capital.
Article
Childcare is a topic that is frequently in the media spotlight and continues to spark heated debate in the UK and around the world. This book presents an in-depth study of childcare policy and practice, examining middle class parents' choice of childcare within the wider contexts of social class and class fractions, social reproduction, gendered responsibilities and conceptions of 'good' parenting. Drawing on the results of a qualitative empirical study of two groups of middle class parents living in two London localities, this book: takes into account key theoretical frameworks in childcare policy, setting them in broader social, political and economic contexts. considers the development of the UK government's childcare strategy from its birth in 1998 to the present day. highlights the critical debates surrounding middle class families and their choice of childcare. explores parents' experiences of childcare and their relationships with carers. This important study comes to a number of thought-provoking conclusions and offers valuable insights into a complex subject. It is essential reading for all those working in or studying early years provision and policy as well as students of sociology, class, gender and work.
Article
In modem times, the human biography has become a project and the status of adolescents and young adults has changed. Young people do not automatically grow up within a framework which makes their biography a ‘normal’ adult biography, but instead, youth and adulthood acquire new varieties of significance for the subjects. Both the structure and the content of status passages in the life-course are affected by these changes. Status passages have changed structurally, they show a tendency towards synchronicity instead of linearity and have become reversible. Adolescents and young adults develop life concepts and attempt to direct the content and complexity of their lives: at the same time, they are forced to adapt to the constantly changing demands of their environment (especially the labour market). They have to take advantage of training and labour market opportunities, but must also combine these choices with decisions about personal matters so as to develop well-organized life concepts. ‘I don't want to commit myself yet’ is a strategy of action which expresses the problems young people have in coping with this task. In this article empirical biographical material from a youth project in the Netherlands is used to demonstrate the manner in which young people realize their life paths and project them into an open future. In doing so, a distinction is made between ‘trendsetters’ whose life concepts involve ‘choice biographies’ and those who are oriented towards a ‘normal biography’, especially concerning areas of life such as training and ideas about the future balance between ‘working and living’.
Article
This article focuses on the relationship between credentials and the occupational structure, drawing on quantitative research data from a study of UK graduates with first‐class honours degrees. Within a knowledge‐driven economy, in the UK it is commonly assumed that university graduates with the highest credentials will receive the best employment opportunities and be better rewarded in the labour market, regardless of characteristics such as gender or educational biography. The data are used to evaluate such assumptions. While graduates with firsts are to some extent shown to be at a positional advantage within the labour market, when their outcomes are compared to those with 2.2 degrees, the article also highlights a significant degree of variation among the labour market outcomes of those with firsts. In particular, there are important gender differences among those with firsts which cannot be explained by the credential alone.
Article
John Field (2000) has recently argued that there are changes taking place in the practices of governing that have significant implications for lifelong learning. In particular, he points to attempts to mobilize civil society, of which life-long learning policies may be considered a part. This paper examines this proposition by locating Field's argument within wider debates about governmentality and the attempt to fashion calculating and enterprising selves. Drawing on actor-network theory, the paper then explores some of the ways in which changes in the curriculum associated with lifelong learning contribute to that process. In bringing together the discussion of lifelong learning, governmentality and actor-network theory, the paper provides a framing for researching the effects of policy and, more precisely, the differential ways in which active subjects are mobilized.
Article
This paper addresses some general issues concerning consumption that arise from the work of Bauman, Beck and Giddens. All maintain that biography is a reflexive project and that life-styles and consumption are critical to identity-formation and re-formation. Bauman, especially, maintains that this is a source of anxiety, the freedom implied by consumer choice entailing a commensurate degree of personal responsibility. He observes, for instance, that a function of advertising is to assuage the self-doubt that accompanies choice. I seek to argue that these accounts of the impact of reflexive modernisation on self-identity are misjudged. Consumption would be a much less pleasurable practice if it was both subject to ever-expanding free choice and the decisions made were fundamental components of a reflexive process of identity-formation. Indeed, the consequence might well be high and visible levels of distress among those individuals most deeply involved. That this is not apparent suggests that the relationships specified between the process of identity-formation and consumption is tendentious. Consumption may be anxiety-provoking for some groups; there is a real element of risk involved in choosing inappropriately. But there are many mechanisms that serve to compensate. I explore those mechanisms, suggesting that anxiety is avoided through certain processes of group identification and social regulation which the reflexive modernisation thesis claims have atrophied. I conclude that such considerations require that these theories about the relationship between consumption and self-identity be modified.
Article
While certain theorists have suggested that identity is increasingly reflexive, such accounts are arguably problematised by Bourdieu's concept of habitus, which – in pointing to the ‘embeddedness’ of our dispositions and tastes – suggests that identity may be less susceptible to reflexive intervention than theorists such as Giddens have implied. This paper does not dispute this so much as suggest that, for increasing numbers of contemporary individuals, reflexivity itself may have become habitual, and that for those possessing a flexible or reflexive habitus, processes of self-refashioning may be ‘second nature’ rather than difficult to achieve. The paper concludes by examining some of the wider implications of this argument, in relation not only to identity projects, but also to fashion and consumption, patterns of exclusion, and forms of alienation or estrangement, the latter part of this section suggesting that those displaying a reflexive habitus, whilst at a potential advantage in certain respects, may also face considerable difficulties simply ‘being themselves’.‘I noticed how people played at being executives while actually holding executive positions. Did I do this myself? You maintain a shifting distance between yourself and your job. There's a self-conscious space, a sense of formal play that is a sort of arrested panic, and maybe you show it in a forced gesture or a ritual clearing of the throat. Something out of childhood whistles through this space, a sense of games and half-made selves, but it's not that you’re pretending to be someone else. You’re pretending to be exactly who you are. That's the curious thing.’ (DeLillo, 1997: 103)
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The limited and sometimes contradictory published literature, mostly relating to younger age groups and non-British societies, suggests that planning and a longer time perspective are inhibited by economic insecurity, by tight structuring of the life course, and a track record of failing to achieve ambitions. This paper uses survey data, backed by qualitative interviews, to investigate planning and forethought in a sample of young adults in the Scottish town of Kirkcaldy in the late 1990s. Responses are compared with those of older age groups and of people of the same age twelve years earlier. Economic insecurity and failure to achieve ambitions had been seen by our older respondents as particularly characteristic of the lives of young adults. However, in spite of considerable sense of insecurity, the young adults we studied do in general feel in control of their lives, and do have well articulated ambitions and plans to achieve them with respect especially to work and housing. Indeed, conditions of modern life almost force many to seek to plan to some degree in these areas. Forethought and an element of planning, albeit often quite provisional in its nature, seems actually to provide some sense of security in an uncertain world. Respondents also show considerable commitment to future childbearing and partnership, though past experience of entry to both has often been fairly haphazard and there is evidence of cultural resistance to overly rational planning in such areas. Failing to achieve ambitions in the past does not affect ambitions but does limit willingness to plan for the future, especially for the long-run. Poverty and job insecurity, and also the presence of children, inhibit planning, in some cases to extreme degrees.
Class and pedagogies: Visible and invisible
  • B Bernstein
  • A Halsey
  • H Lauder
  • P Brown
  • A Wells
  • Oxford
BERNSTEIN, B. (1997) Class and pedagogies: visible and invisible, in HALSEY, A., LAUDER, H., BROWN, P. and WELLS, A. (eds) Education: Culture, Economy, Society Oxford, Oxford University Press.
The European citizen in a learning society: Governed, mobilised or active?
  • J Holford
Choices of degree or degrees of choice? Class, ‘race’ and the higher education choice process
  • D Reay
  • J Davies
  • M David
  • S Ball
Career decision making and the transition from school to work
  • P Hodkinson