Rethinking social justice, equality and emancipation : an invitation to attentive career guidance

Abstract

One might regard social justice as an ideal, but also as a part of biopolitics, that is, the management of populations in terms of the security and well-being of citizens (Foucault, 2008). In the Western transition towards modernity, the issue of social justice emerged as a response to the radical transformation of social structures in industrial societies. At the core of social justice during that period were efforts to improve the distribution of resources and individuals’ inclusion into society in order to allow them to practice their rights and duties as citizens (Reisch, 2014). From the view of education and career guidance, social justice is traditionally associated with a common good and a just society in addition to, among other things, the redistribution of welfare, inclusion, the opportunities of citizenship and diversity (Strand & Roos, 2012; Sultana, 2014a). In the early 1900s, vocational guidance was an attempt to contribute to what was considered to be central to social justice at the time—preventing exclusion from entering employment and supporting oneself in society. Later, in the welfare state regime, the role of the guidance practitioner was designed to function as the expertise of the progression of individuals’ development with regard to work and education (Sultana, 2014a; Plant & Kjærgård, 2016). In contrast to the redistribution of resources and the order of progression in the welfare state regime, neoliberal rationality rests upon the allocation of resources and the order of competition. Neoliberal governance works by access, participation, the delegation of responsibility and the deployment of expertise to support equal opportunities (Dean, 2010). The neoliberal rationality of equal opportunities to participate in democratic processes and social networks in society underpins the reasoning of social justice. In this logic, social justice has come to be more or less equivalent to social inclusion for the support of individuals’ opportunity to participate in society and take the lead in their own lives. Thus, the moral imperative is associated with performing active citizenship, and this presumes inclusion into society. This idea informs career guidance activities that aim at autonomy and career self-management (Bengtsson, 2016). Within both the progression discourse and the equal opportunity discourse the educated subject and the informed subject emerge as available positions of identification for a responsible citizen. However, as shown, these subjects are constructed from different kinds of knowledge, mechanisms and governing practices operating in a social-historical context. Related to equal opportunity, the states of exclusion are considered a temporal lack of inclusion in neoliberal governmental and social order. Consequently, inclusion is the target and the goal in expert programmes on counselling and learning. In accord with this logic, the ‘experts of inclusion’ (Rose, 1999) such as the teacher and the guidance practitioner, are expected to ‘treat every form of exclusion as a temporal condition of individuals in need of special support’ (Simons & Masschelein, 2010a, p. 598). This reasoning of social inclusion, according to Irving (2010), shapes career possibilities to be an apolitical issue and merely a matter of adaptation to a competitive labour market and changing requests for employment. The role of career guidance is then to support certain groups who have not yet obtained the necessary skills to adapt and be included in the game of competition, bridge the gap between the proclaimed equal opportunity and reduce inequality. This rationale is illustrated in the section concerning career guidance policy for social inclusion. This chapter aims to problematise the logic and practices that underlie assumptions about social justice within current career guidance. In the first section, I address contemporary public career guidance policy (primarily EU policy) and the attributes ascribed to social justice and the governing rationality that underpin them. Taking risk governance as an example, I examine current thinking regarding risk and the ways individuals and groups are subjected to position themselves in this social order. Further, I examine the role of career guidance in the governing of risk. In the second section, I discuss some stated suggestions for emancipatory career guidance in contemporary career research to challenge neoliberal politics concerning social justice and the accompanying agenda. In relation to this, I also introduce Rancière’s thought-provoking ideas about intellectual equality, which is the basis for educational emancipation and its implications for career guidance. Lastly, and related to the assumption of equality, I offer a theoretical suggestion of what I call an attentive career guidance as an attempt think about equality and emancipation differently and reflect upon how it matters for career guidance.