Career education and guidance and race (in)equality in England

Abstract

We are living in neoliberal times. Since the oil crisis of 1973 and the global recession it provoked, ‘the new capitalism’ (Sennett, 2006) has transformed economic and social conditions. Neoliberal policies promote economic competitiveness rather than the welfare of citizens as the primary task of governments. Neoliberalism transfers wealth from the poorest to wealthiest, and from public to private coffers (Harvey, 2003). The new, neoliberal economy tends to be associated with narratives of inevitable global ‘progress’, which it is seen as impossible, and even nonsensical, to resist. Scholars have outlined the implications of neoliberal regimes for education, learning and work (see Hooley, Sultana and Thomsen’s introduction to Career Guidance for Social Justice). A key consequence of neoliberal change has been the growth of unemployment and precarious, low-paid work, creating large communities of ‘unemployable and invalid’ people (Bauman, 2004, p. 51) across the globe, for whom there is no work in the new economy. Characteristics which are valued in neoliberal regimes include competiveness, an entrepreneurial attitude, individualism, flexibility, self-interest, aspiration and resilience (Giroux, 2004; Chandler & Reid, 2016). The risk and responsibility for lifelong education, employment and well-being is being shifted to individuals. Disadvantage is seen to be the result of bad choices and individual decisions. The cultures of the most disadvantaged populations are pathologised in order to legitimise the reduction of the welfare state and blame the poor and disadvantaged for their own disadvantage, allowing them to be identified as the blockage to future global competition and national economic prosperity. A main focus of education and learning in neoliberal regimes is to change individuals’ behaviour in face of insecurity, precarity and risk, rather than changing wider conditions to address these insecurities. Pedagogies in neoliberal regimes focus therefore on individual or community capabilities, on capacity-building and empowerment of the subject to make better decisions, on teaching people to make better lifestyle choices and on resilience-building (Chandler, 2016) as well as instilling characteristics such as competiveness, an entrepreneurial attitude, flexibility, selfinterest and aspiration in individuals, characteristics which, as I show below, are viewed by the UK government as important in careers work (Department for Education, 2017). Before considering careers work in more detail, I briefly explore some of the main implications of neoliberal regimes for race equality.