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- Lidström, Lena, 1967-
(författare)
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En resa med osäkra mål : Unga vuxnas övergångar från skola till arbete i ett biografiskt perspektiv
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- School-to-work (STW) transitions have become more protracted over recent decades, with increased risks of unemployment and social exclusion for young people. Moreover, young people are expected to plan their own career and enhance their employability, although gender and social and cultural background still significantly influence employment prospects. Policies have been developed in an attempt to facilitate young people’s pathways into work. However, STW-transitions are one of the weakest points in Swedish welfare system; in addition the quality of career guidance has been questioned. This dissertation aims to describe and analyse young adults STW-transitions from a biographical perspective. It is based around life story interviews with 52 unemployed young adults’, 25-29 years old, including men and women with varying educational backgrounds, living in three different Swedish local contexts. Four research questions are examined: How do the young adults’ describe their STW-transitions in retrospect? What characterized their horizons of actions at the time of the interview? What is the impact of public career guidance? How did ethnicity, gender and locality affect answers to the above questions - and how may such differences be interpreted? The analysis of the young adults’ narratives was based on the careership theory developed by Hodkinson and Sparkes. In retrospect the young adults described their STW-transitions as an attempt to find and achieve personal goals. They emphasized turning points, i.e. when education or a job begins or ends, but also highlighted experiences when studying or working that make them realize what they wanted or what they would not accept. Four transition patterns, partly connected to gender and locality, were identified among the respondents: yo-yoing between workplaces, education and unemployment; mainly working; mainly in education; or mainly excluded from work and education. These patterns involved varying experiences, current situations and future expectations. At the time of the interview the young adults’ horizon of action involved interrelated aspects of life, but getting a stable job and settling down was pivotal to most of them. The strategies of the interviewees for navigating between dreams and reality diverged. However, they shared an ambition “to put one’s talents to good use” and feared not being able to do so. Experiences of career guidance were generally reported to have been sporadic and meaningless. However, in some cases, interventions are influential for example, when choosing an upper secondary school or during times of unemployment. The young adults’ employed various strategies when interventions adversely affected their goals; of these “to managing by one’s self” was the most common. In addition, guidance varied according to ethnicity and local structures. It is concluded that STW-transitions are challenging journeys, mainly undertaken without professional support, which the young adults perceived as uncertain.
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| 2. |
- Lindblad, Michael, 1957-
(författare)
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"De förstod aldrig min historia" : unga vuxna med migrationsbakgrund om skolmisslyckande och övergångar mellan skola och arbete
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study aims to deepen knowledge of young people with a migration background in Sweden, particularly those with non-European backgrounds, and their transitions from school to work. The focus is on young people with uncompleted upper secondary education (USE), drawing on their life stories, and exploring their perceptions and experiences around school failure, entering the labour market, and/or not being in education, employment or training (NEET).Theoretically the study analyses individuals’ career decisions from an agency-structure perspective, drawing on careership theory, in particular the notions of pragmatic-rational choices, routines, turning-points and horizons of action (Hodkinson & Sparkes 1997), combined with theories on ‘otherness’ (Hall 1990; 1999, Anthias 2002, Balibar 2004, Trondman 2007), and the notion of socio-geographic space (Bourdieu 1986a; Bourdieu 1999, Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1996).Methodologically, the thesis is based on narrative research, and the empirical material comprise life stories of twenty young people (men and women) about their lives, school experiences and time after leaving school. The careers of the young people were developed in fields where they had subordinate positions, based on their family’s mostly limited social, economic and cultural capital, their own short education and limited experience, and the otherness they encountered. Against this background, their educational and labour market career choices are understood as pragmatic-rational, enabled and limited by the resulting horizons of action. However, the collected narratives suggest that their horizons of action developed from the time they left school when they made different pragmatic-rational choices that changed their positions. Nevertheless, career choices were often made within a bounded agency and reduced opportunities as a consequence of school failure and their own scarce resources. The learning and interaction taking place within the routine periods are both crucial for understanding processes that result in school failure and the subsequent extended period of establishment in working and adult life, and change of horizons of action and habitus.The narratives of the young people showed that school failures and dropout are complex and extended processes that are related to education and family, as well as access to power and capital. They also encountered difference-making through the predominant images and discourses of 'immigration' as a social problem and by being located in a specific socio-geographic space that limited their possibilities for action. The family was highly significant and, in most cases, represented security and continuity. The family’s present situation and future was crucial to the young adults, which affected their choices. Hence, their own horizon of action also included the family’s opportunities and horizon of action. The study indicates that there is sometimes reason to speak of a collective horizon of action rather than just an individual one. Institutional and informal support together with young people’s agency may enable positive career development in spite of a lack of resources provided to the young, particularly if schools and other institutions would provide more professional and timely support. The overall conclusion is that it would not have taken much investment of resources and effort to have prevented school failure for a large proportion of the twenty young adults in this study. That is the good news.
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