It's for the rest of your life: The pragmatics of youth career decision-making

Authors

Anthea Taylor, Edith Cowan University

Document Type

Journal Article

Publisher

Sage Publications Inc

Faculty

Faculty of Community Services, Education and Social Sciences

School

School of Education / Fogarty Learning Centre

RAS ID

4417

Comments

Taylor, A. (2005). It’s for the Rest of Your Life The Pragmatics of Youth Career Decision Making. Youth & Society, 36(4), 471-503. Available here

Abstract

Although new understandings of career decision-making processes are emerging, the prevailing rhetoric points to careers imbued with new worker attributes—flexibility, job mobility, and constant upskilling. This discussion of the pragmatics of youth career decision making draws on a series of transition studies with Western Australian youths, many aspiring to enter the building trades. Here, career-related decisions were influenced by images of masculinity and aspirations for an on-the-job lifestyle of sociability and intersected with a confusing complex of impinging pragmatic decisions. In these trades, these youths sought challenge and fulfillment in their work and a degree of job security, at least during the training period. Their longer term career aspirations stood in stark contrast to contemporary conceptions and portrayals of the flexible, short-stay, new employee. The question as to how universally appropriate and even desirable might be the preparation of all to be new workers is considered.

DOI

10.1177/0044118X04268485

Access Rights

free_to_read