Floating Downstream? Parental Support and Future Expectations of Young People from Less Privileged Backgrounds

Abstract

Here we present an analysis of young people's orientations to the future in the context of intergenerational relations. We draw on qualitative interviews to examine how young people from less privileged backgrounds use their family as an anchor when mapping the landscape of possible futures. Further, we use extensive quantitative material from structured surveys to provide contextual information on how young people's imagined futures are shaped by the earlier generation. The study shows that the ingredients with which young people concoct their futures are in many ways grounded in their families' attempts to provide the most favourable support they can manage within the structural constraints and on the basis of the affordances that are available to them, but largely regardless of their class background. Our analysis also emphasises that there is a wide range of trajectories between academic careers conventionally understood as 'successful' and the careers resulting in 'social exclusion'.

Educational trajectories of immigrant-origin youths in Finland: a mixed methods analysis

“…Envisioned trajectories as reflections of structural factors and subjective perceptions Aaltonen and Karvonen (2016) refer to certain 'core transitions' in adolescent life that are built around education, work and relationships (see also Heinz 2009;Cieslik and Simpson 2013). Aaltonen and Karvonen (2016) note that the ideal of succeeding in these transitional areas is maintained not only by adult society, but also by most adolescents, while Malmberg (1996) points out that youths express the importance of the main life domains regardless of cultural or subcultural differences. The final year of comprehensive education is commonly understood as 'one of the first transitional points at which young people's future-oriented agency and imagination are called into play' (Aaltonen and Karvonen 2016).…”

“…Aaltonen and Karvonen (2016) note that the ideal of succeeding in these transitional areas is maintained not only by adult society, but also by most adolescents, while Malmberg (1996) points out that youths express the importance of the main life domains regardless of cultural or subcultural differences. The final year of comprehensive education is commonly understood as 'one of the first transitional points at which young people's future-oriented agency and imagination are called into play' (Aaltonen and Karvonen 2016).…”

'I Didn’t Know You Can’t Plan so Far Ahead': Symbolic Logics behind the Choice of Vocational Education in Russia

“…In developing this approach, researchers focused on different aspects of transitions, and stressed the importance of the serendipity diversity of trajectories within one social class (Atkins, 2017), highlighted the reflexivity of working-class young people (Aaltonen, Karvonen, 2016, Laughland-Booy, et al, 2015, and pointed out that working-class youth are not less aware of their social positioning (Lehman, 2004). Some of the latest research shows that middle-class youth learn to envision and enact the "agentic self"an orientation towards the future, persistence in controlling one's fate, while working-class youth learn to passively accept what comes.…”

Immigrant-origin youth and the indecisiveness of choice for upper secondary education in Finland

“…Future aspirations reflect the class positions, students being subject to particular resources, opportunities and constraints (Goldthorpe 1996), and are accorded different time perspectives from less-advantaged class positions (Aaltonen and Karvonen 2015). According to Galliott and Graham (2015;see also 2014), both personal characteristics and educational experience are vital in determining an individual's ability to make a career choice.…”