Page 4 - euroguidance-insight-newsletter-2013-spring

Strengthening guidance in turbulent times:

rights and responsibilities

What role does career guidance have at time of youth unemployment,
and job insecurity throughout Europe? Professor Sultana devoted his
speech to this topic on the European Presidency Conference that took
place in October 2012 in Larnaca/Cyprus.

We are living in turbulent, deeply working within its logic. These dif- with, communities.
troubled times. I will not rehearse ferent but ultimately closely linked
the damning statistics that are eve- versions of economic management Role of Career Guidance?
ry government’s nightmare, and strove to restore higher rates of What then, in this scenario, is, and
which are a blight on Europe. Nor profit through deregulation, privati- should be, the role of career guid-
do any of us need reminding that, zation, and the dismantling of the ance? In this situation, is career
for millions of young people in Eu- public sector, reducing the barriers guidance yet another frill, repre-
rope who had believed in the gospel to global trade in ways that led to senting yet another cost to govern-
of lifelong learning, and invested the export of jobs to cheaper labour ments, or can one claim that it is a
their youth in education and train- markets, and to the disempowering right, a service which citizens are
ing, the transition to economic in- of workers. Such choices also led to entitled to, part of a safety net that
dependence and adulthood remains what turned out to be scandalous supports them as they navigate
truncated, unfulfilled, unachievable. and disastrous de-regulation of fi- stormy and troubled waters? Gov-
That nightmare is shared by those nancial markets, often thanks to ernments are quick to impose aus-
who do find employment, but in collusions between the financial terity on citizens, who have to pay
jobs that, far from being knowledge and political elites, resulting in the for badly managed and badly imag-
-rich, make little use of the skills exposure of ordinary citizens to ined economies. To curtail, with-
and competences that have been huge risks. draw, or fail to offer support–one
patiently accumulated, often at This imperative of “freedom” is could argue—is nothing less an af-
great cost to themselves and their lived as ambivalence, confusion, front, adding insult to injury. In this
families. Many adults too share the doubt, fear, failure and anxiety, as scenario, should career guidance
precarity and insecurity that marks the individualized, competitive sub- practitioners allow themselves to
the life of so many other citizens, as jects of neoliberalism attempt to be absorbed by the dominant logic,
industry seeks flexibility in order to live out their freedoms in such a the master discourse of our times
remain competitive, giving short way as to maximize individual po- that seeks to hold responsible indi-
shrift to the conditions that Europe tential and thence their competitive viduals, by promoting career man-
has struggled for centuries to advantage. In education as much as agement skills as the ultimate solu-
achieve, conditions which set out to in the labour market, that self- tion, inadvertently implying that
ensure that human dignity and a centred individualism is promoted structural problems can be solved
decent standard of living for all by an array of concepts and strate- through the bravura of individuals?
would not be sacrificed in the inter- gies to which career guidance is not Or should career guidance be re-
ests of capital. a stranger: individual education imagined in ways that pay more
plans, individualised programmes of than lip-service to collective forms
What led to this situation? study, personal action planning, of solidarity? How, if at all, can ca-
Governments across Europe have personal life projects, individual reer guidance contribute to a social-
adopted varieties of economic ne- learning accounts, individualised ly just engagement with citizens in a
oliberalism, ranging from those that skills profiles, personalised life de- context where social justice is in-
were prepared to allow the market sign…one and all transpose social creasingly absent, and where words
to direct the fate of citizens, to upheavals to the level of the indi- like empowerment, social inclusion,
those that experimented with ‘Third vidual, ironically using the language and social cohesion have come to
Way’, so-called ‘inclusive liberal- of empowerment and of rights, for- stand for the exact opposite of what
ism’, which strove to temper the getting that rights can only be sus- they are meant to signify, given that
impact of the market, while still tained by, and in interdependence they relate to a context which, by