Dissonant futures: occupational trajectories, gender and class in contemporary municipal adult education in Sweden

Abstract

The aim of this article is to problematize the ways class and gender are played out in adult students’ narratives about their occupational choice and future. Drawing on Beverly Skeggs, we analyse how students think about future occupations, what motivates them towards these and how they are able to form their future in relation to them. Taking on Sweden as a case, our results show that students’ narratives on their future occupations are classed as well as gendered. In their vision of future occupations, working-class students tend to focus on occupations helping and caring for others, while middle-class students tend to focus on work more as a means of fulfilling themselves as individuals. These differences are also gendered. Female students are more likely than their male counterparts to picture their future occupations in relation to having children and a family. This tells us that in the female students’ narratives, there tends to be a strong focus on caring – for their families as well as in future occupations.

Keywords:

• Adult education
• adult students
• gender
• class
• respectability
• caring

Notes

1. The project followed the ethical guidelines for research published by the Swedish research council, including informed consent and anonymity. Accordingly, in the article the name of the city, the school as well as of the students have been omitted for anonymity reasons.