https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/36054 2026-04-27T02:46:18Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/36220 Title: Representing problems, imagining solutions : emancipatory career guidance for the multitude Authors: Hooley, Tristram; Sultana, Ronald G.; Thomsen, Rie Abstract: Our last book (Hooley, Sultana, & Thomsen, 2018) began with a quote from Donald Trump, where he argued that the people of the USA could not be expected to shoulder the blame for the fact that their careers had not turned out in the way that they had hoped. Prolonged recession and the capture of the good life by the elites should be seen as a systematic failure and a failure by the political class, he argued, rather than a failure of individuals. We used this quote to illustrate some of the crises that neoliberalism is experiencing and how they impact on the careers of individuals. We also used it as a warning that you cannot believe all that you are told and that what looks like social justice may turn out to be just the opposite. In this book we start in a different place—we start in the multitude and in the resistance. 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/36219 Title: Career guidance and neoliberal rationality in Italian schools Authors: Romito, Marco Abstract: Italy has amongst the highest rates of youth unemployment in Europe. With occupational opportunities constantly eroded by restructuring and downsizing in the manufacturing sector, particularly for unskilled and low-skilled workers, the number of individuals living in poverty is rising dramatically (ISTAT, 2016a, 2016b). In this context, education constitutes a key arena of competition, and a means of acquiring strategic resources to reduce the risk of downward mobility and social exclusion. On the one hand, education is vital in reproducing social privilege within the context of a shrinking middle class (Bagnasco, 2016; Gornick & Jäntii, 2013); on the other, it is increasingly needed to protect the working class from crossing the poverty line (Field, 2006; Gallino, 2014; ISTAT, 2016b). This has led to a situation in which the work of teachers, but also guidance professionals, particularly those working with younger pupils, is highly complex, challenging and political (Sultana, 2014a, 2014b). How guidance practices support and contribute to shaping educational trajectories can either reinforce existing inequalities—and the ideological frameworks that produce and legitimise them—or reduce them by opening up spaces for social mobility and by questioning the symbolic and material structures that enable them (Hooley & Sultana, 2016; Watts, 1996). In this chapter, I provide a critical analysis of a set of guidance practices observed through an ethnographic study conducted in two schools located in an urban area characterised by various dimensions of educational and social disadvantage. Although the practices observed cannot encompass the vast heterogeneity of guidance activities carried out within the Italian school system, I argue that they constitute a useful case to study the enactment of mainstream guidance policy discourse. In particular—and differently from my earlier work, which gave detailed descriptions of specific guidance devices and their impacts on educational choice (Romito, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c; 2015; 2016a, 2016b, 2017)—my aim here is to evaluate and discuss how multiple guidance practices, inspired by different logics and enacted by different subjects, coexist and operate jointly. While these practices aim to warn students and protect them from future educational failure and social exclusion, I show that they risk having the ‘perverse effect’ of limiting the horizon of possibilities for underprivileged students (Hodkinson, 1998; see also the chapter by Vieira et al. in Career Guidance for Social Justice). Moreover, I point out that these practices encourage students to be (1) autonomous and responsible for their choices and (2) adaptable to the presumed requests of the current economic and labour market context. The fact that these imperatives constitute part of the ‘educational’ message transmitted to students at a relatively young age (12–13 years) is a paradigmatic example of how neoliberal discourse is penetrating (and transforming) the ways in which teachers and guidance practitioners make sense of their educational task (Laval, Clement, & Dreux, 2012). 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/36217 Title: ‘I am what I am’ : queering career development and practice Authors: Hancock, Adrian; Taylor, Alan Abstract: A fertile ground for the expression, contestation and establishment of social justice in the last few decades has been in the increased rights that have been obtained for LGBT+ people—lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgendered, intersex, asexual and other sexual minorities— across the globe. LGBT+ rights are a live topic for political debate, are discussed in terms of business best practice and have energised social change in many countries. A significant contribution to debates within these disparate fields has been made by queer theory, queer authors and queer activism. Rather than discussing individual career choice and development for LGBT+ people as being worthy of ‘special’ support, with the help of queer theory we will instead trouble and ‘queer’ the notion of career guidance. We will propose that career guidance could be considered complicit and active in the reproduction of gendered and oppressive social control. Career guidance appears to be stuck in outmoded concepts of sexuality through its implicit adoption of heteronormative assumptions about the nature of career, work, organisation and personal development. Conversely, queer theory asks questions about how work could be organised differently, as well as drawing attention to the power relations inherent in neoliberalism at the expense of LGBT+ people and other marginalised groups. This chapter will build on previously reported possibilities for practice with the LGBT+ community, thus addressing a specific need: namely, to increase the LGBT+ community’s visibility within career guidance. However, we must also recognise that for some LGBT+ individuals (especially the younger generation) there is no such thing as a fixed sexual or gender identity. And we go even further by arguing that, once we accept the need to incorporate the LGBT+ community within our practice, we will be engaged in a broader challenge to patriarchy. We therefore need to immediately ‘queer’ our assumptions about how career guidance may contribute to the oppression of sexual minorities, and indeed all of us,through an assumption of the normality of (artificially developed) heterosexual lifestyles and constraints—heteronormativity (Warner, 1993). In this chapter we will discuss some of the tenets of queer theory and those aspects of career guidance which are troubled by queer theory concepts and suggest how queering career guidance practice could challenge the tenets of neoliberalism—which are contingent on heteronormative assumptions—and thus contribute to the development of social justice within working lives and in broader society. It may be helpful to point out that the authors of this chapter have had to negotiate LGBT+ identities throughout their careers. First, we need to establish what we are discussing when we start to address social justice from a feminist, and then from a queer, standpoint. Fraser (1999) characterises two main approaches to social justice: the redistributive paradigm emphasised by Marxist, socialist and economic approaches; and the recognitive approach which is predicated on a defence of minority cultural lifestyles and, more than that, a celebration of diversity (see also the chapter by Rice in Career Guidance for Social Justice). Examples of the latter include feminist approaches, critiques of racism and, in turn, approaches which seek to recognise, and protect, the lives of those who do not comply with cultural ‘norms’ and dominant paradigms, including socialist, capitalist and neoliberal worldviews. While Fraser (1999) argued for the integration of the two approaches above, we can usefully draw on the recognitive approach to draw attention to issues of elision and exclusion of LGBT+ lives within careers discourse, as well as debating whether career practitioners challenge or replicate social injustice. Further, and in contrast, one can analyse and deconstruct social justice by drawing on feminist notions of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991) and, more radically, by an approach of ‘queering’ or destabilising the normal, and normalising cultural forces, which one can argue are fundamental in the reproduction of social injustice experienced by those living minority and, most usually, abject or subaltern lifestyles (Spivak, 1988). We propose that a queer approach to careers is essential for the establishment of social justice with regard to LGBT+ people, and that it may also be liberatory for everyone for whom traditional heteronormalising power articulations are unsupportive—for instance, single mothers, people in non-traditional or fragmented careers (Fenton & Dermott, 2006) and blended families—indeed anyone who does not fit with a particular, historical notion of the ‘working family’ (see Chapter 2). Neoliberalism is a discourse which splits the domestic and the workplace, through highly gendered assumptions which facilitate male (heterosexual) paid work and female (domestic, caring) unpaid work, through educational and disciplinary devices which reproduce and define heterosexual normality. Neoliberalism does not create a conducive environment for the LGBT+ community (Grady, Marquez, & McLaren, 2012; Peterson, 2011), although there will be both ‘queer winners and losers of neoliberalism’ (Binnie, 2014, p. 245). Simple resistance to heteronormativity through non-conformity can result in a reinforcement of neoliberal hegemony through the proliferation of pleasure-centred consumerist lifestyles (Winnubst, 2012). Equally, and illustratively, there are clear indications that ‘homonormativity’ (Duggan, 2002), visibility of the ‘pink pound’ and domination of the discourse of LGBT+ resistance by white gay males can further marginalise people of colour (Grady et al., 2012), women and other minorities. It is essential therefore, that in queering career guidance we move firmly towards a destabilisation of neoliberalism and concomitant heteronormativity and become more aware of and engaged in sexual politics in support of social justice. Whilst neoliberalism and heteronormativity may be supported by much current career practice, practitioners have the opportunity to analyse, subvert and recognise alternatives to this. 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/36216 Title: Interventions for career construction and work inclusion of individuals with disability Authors: Ginevra, Maria Cristina; Santilli, Sara; Nota, Laura; Soresi, Salvatore Abstract: The current job market is obliging many citizens to face a number of challenges, including instability and insecurity (Nota & Rossier, 2015). Those with some form of disability also face these challenges, with difficulties in finding and keeping employment compounded by the way society views their situation (Carter, Quaglia, & Leslie, 2010). As the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the United Nations (OHCHR, 2012) reminds us, work gives access to an income that helps individuals and groups cater for their needs, it promotes the exercise and development of skills and it facilitates inclusion in—and contribution to—the community. The OHCHR also highlights the fact that everyone has the right to choose how and where they want to work, to be treated well at work and to get help from the state when they cannot work. Those with disability have the right to meaningful work alongside persons without disability, and workplaces need to be designed in such a way that they accommodate their needs. Furthermore, international studies reveal that for persons with disability, work continues to be meaningful and important, providing a source of identity and contributing towards feelings of normality (Saunders & Nedelec, 2014). In recent decades, many countries around the world have acknowledged the work-related rights of persons with disability and have made significant progress toward creating a more inclusive work environment thanks to legislation and public policies (Mor Barak, 2016). Although the combination of anti-discrimination laws and action programmes has helped several minority groups and facilitated access to the workforce, the phenomenon of exclusion still prevails, to a greater or lesser extent, in most societies (Foster & Wass, 2013). Individuals with disability experience several disadvantages in the labour market: they usually get jobs which pay less, they are more likely to get a job for a short time only and they are less likely to get a promotion or to have a progressive career pathway. They are also more likely to be hired for low-skilled jobs, less likely to benefit from training in the workplace and more likely to experience career obstacles (Bell & Blanchflower, 2010; OHCHR, 2012). 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z