This book explores how the changing nature of work intersects with and influences young people's views on their future. As an increasingly precarious service sector overtakes traditional industrial work, vocational education and training (VET) is held up as a panacea for poverty alleviation, youth unemployment and economic growth. However, the views of young people in VET themselves concerning their own work and aspirations have largely been ignored. Based on interviews and focus groups conducted with over 250 young people in VET in Romania, this book examines the types of subjectivities that are generated in the processes by which they try to make sense of future and the meanings of work. In doing so, the author identifies three ideological layers that frame their views: arguing that while the young people interviewed hold 'conventional' aspirations for stability and predictability; they were visibly influenced by neoliberal beliefs in agency, experimentation and short termism. Ultimately, a layer of low expectations crystallises unvoiced concerns over a troubling future. In highlighting young people's voices, this pioneering book calls for a recalibration of the emphasis on VET in Romania. It will appeal to students and scholars of youth studies, the sociology of work, vocational education and training and European studies.
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Precarity and Vocational Education and Training
Craftsmanship and Employability in Romania
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eBook - ePub
Precarity and Vocational Education and Training
Craftsmanship and Employability in Romania
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Topic
EducationSubtopic
Labour EconomicsĀ© The Author(s) 2019
Maria-Carmen PanteaPrecarity and Vocational Education and Traininghttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02689-9_11. Introduction
Maria-Carmen Pantea1
(1)
Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, BabeČ-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Maria-Carmen Pantea
Keywords
Young peopleRomaniaVocational education and trainingPolicyWorkPrecarious workVocationCommunismThere are certain issues thatāat least in the European public spaceāattracted high consensus: volunteering, youth entrepreneurship and initial vocational education and training (VET). They all share such an overwhelming positive social load that it is hard to find alternative discourses. It is hard to imagine reasons for which VET would not be inherently something societally good, economically needed if not close to a panacea. It is loaded with the expectation of poverty alleviation, youth employment, skilled workforce (Wieland 2015; Powell 2015; Eichhorst et al. 2015), economic growth and attraction of investments. VET bridges issues from education theory, sociology of work, youth studies, economy and policy making. It is part of strategies on social inclusion and unemployment reduction, but also on innovation. A recent Cedefop research bluntly states that āwhere VET is strong unemployment is lowā (Cedefop 2016, p. 1). Economic agents speak about a shortage of skilled workers, policy makers plan an increase in the number of young people in VET, whilst media promotes successful stories of young women and men who chose VET and a trade (most often as an alternative to a university degree and an option for materiality at the expense of liberal education). All this indicates that, indeed, we expect a lot from VET (Grubb 2001).
Yet, VET is not without its dilemmas. Back in 2002, Alison Wolf, a leading expert on education and skills, questioned the assumption that low-level vocational courses should be the default āofferā for āless academicā pupils. She made a well-argued case in favour of increased investment in education at the elementary school level, as the crucial skills in the labour market are, according to her, mathematical and linguistic. In a radical way, she argued against the policy hypocrisy of promoting initial VET, whilst titling a chapter āA great idea for other peopleās childrenā (Wolf 2002). Later, she argued: There of course remains a risk that some schools will, as has happened in the past, effectively write off some of their least academically successful students, and park them in vocational courses irrespective of whether these ācountā (Wolf Report 2011, p. 113). Nonetheless, in 2011, Cedefop issued a report named āVocational education and training is good for you ā The social benefits of VET for individualsā which shows that āinitial VET is associated with positive changes in social outcomes for individualsā (2011, p. 116).
In many countries, VET is close to a ārestlessā educational area because of hard-to-reconcile interests and competing legitimacies of employers, policy makers, teachers, parents, young people and āsocietyā by large. Yet, important as they are, young peopleās perspectives on VET are at best assumed and often not sought after. To a large extent, young people in VET have been a rather invisible social group, close to Robertsā (2011) āinvisible middleā: young people who fall in between categories that attract high public attention. In many ways, they are āordinary peopleā, at distance from the overqualified graduates or from the exceptional achievements attributed to the emerging young entrepreneurs, and, also, in a different situation than those not in education, employment or training (NEET).
Previous research on VET has been mainly structuralist in nature, as it prioritized labour market needs (Powell 2012). The weak representation of young peopleās āvoicesā from research is in line with their silent, ambivalent status in VET policy making and in the more general thinking about VET. In order to counteract some of the above limitations, this book uses a bottom-up, constructivist understanding of work and education, grounded in young peopleās views. This research came out of the need to add young peopleās own viewsāincomplete and contradictory as they may beāto the emerging debate on VET. First, it addresses an ethical imperative of bringing young peopleās voices closer to the centre of VET policy making. Second, it complements the existent discourses through a different type of knowledge, grounded in young peopleās āpersonal epistemologiesā (Billett 2011, p. 222) over what VET and work is or should be.
The book sets itself the goal of exploring the process by which young people in initial VET (aged 16ā18) try to make sense of their future lives. They are enrolled in a shorter educational track that comes as an alternative to high school education (be it liberal or technical), although some progression routes are later possible. Many have long-term experiences of educational failure, but still, do not make the most disadvantaged group, as they did not drop out, for instance. Their overwhelming majority commute daily from rural areas or small towns. The research tries to understand how young peopleās views on the type of lives they value are articulated with the (arguably objective) prospects of precarious work and precarious lives. In doing so, the book asks what young people in Romaniaās VET find important, what they envisage as useful and for what. Starting from a general view on what matters to young people, the research privileges the imagined role of work in young peopleās projections and examines it through sociological lenses within the interdisciplinary area of youth studies.
Why Romania and Why Now?
Romania tries to reinstate VET attractiveness in an economic climate shaped by global transformations in the meaning of work. Generally, the long-held notion of employment as secure, with a sense of purpose and progression, based on commitment and achievement (craftsmanship cf. Sennett) is shaken. Concerns about the deteriorating quality of jobs start to be experienced in many industries in Romania. Stable work (in production) is increasingly shifting towards precarious work, often in the service sector. By and large, there seems to be a general sense of unease within the labour market where young people now in VET are likely to enter.
Against this backdrop, Standing discussed about peopleās āhabituation of expecting a life of unstable labour and unstable livingā (2014). Chances are that soon many young people now in Romaniaās VET will have precarious jobs. Informed by the notions of craftsmanship and precarity, this book examines the views on future occupational trajectories held by young people in VET. Do young people see themselves as locked in a process that leads them into precarious work? Do they negotiate options and ways out? Is there something else going on?
By having Romania as a VET case study, the book has to bring on board several core-periphery issues. It argues that the young people in VET meet the criteria of a āmissing middleā group (Steve Roberts 2015) in a country that is itself, part of the āmissing middleā: ānot completely Westernā, yet, not āexoticā enough to attract by default interest (CÄrtÄrescu 2017). The book frames VET in the broader socio-economic context shaped by a recent history of de-industrialization, massive dismissals and political turmoil. It argues that the process of de-industrialization was a questionable window of opportunity for profit-making and strategic alliances for some, while for many others this was a perpetual experience of losing ground. Terms such as the ālosers of economic transitionā were often used to refer to people with low skills, from the countryside or, in more general terms, to social groups without enabling circumstances to adapt to the new economy. In the absence of a policy able to find coherent responses, a neoliberal message of self-governance gained potency. People had to secure individual routes to survival or success. Migration became a solution at both individual and family levels and, due to remittances, for the national economy, as well. The social costs for children, families and communities were high and silent.
The increased access to higher education in Romania brought certain distaste for physical work and situated white-collar work as the normative occupational route. From a period with strong occupational identities, the country is undergoing a stage when many workers see their occupational identities eroded. For the older generation, a sense of nostalgia for a time when skills were valued seems recurrent. Now, it is frequent for workers to first tell the name of the company and not their occupation. The country moved from a robust sense of working class, to a situation where individuals are expected to find individual solutions (often precarized) for navigating an unfriendly economic climate. Against this context, in 2007, Romania had the lowest general job satisfaction in Europe (Eurofound 2007). Now, the rate of young people in NEET situations is one of the highest in Europe (20.9% cf. Eurostat 2015).
This book unpacks different layers of geographical marginality and ultimately touches upon the condition of the young people in Romaniaās rural areas, a subpopulation largely absent from youth research. By and large, young people from the rural areas are marginally reflected in the current youth studies. At best...
Table of contents
- Cover
- Front Matter
- 1.Ā Introduction
- Part I. Manual Work, Vocations and the Creation of Working Subjects
- Part II
- Back Matter
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