Emotional geographies of young people's aspirations for adult life

Abstract

For the last decade, the aspirations of working class young people have been a significant policy concern in the UK, with a range of interventions being implemented to work on and ‘raise’ them (particularly through initiatives to widen participation in higher education). This paper considers the emotional geographies of young people's aspirations. Interventions to ‘raise’ young people's aspirations act on an emotional/affective level (creating ‘wow’ moments that affect their perceptions of what is possible) but seldom engage holistically with the full range of emotions that young people experience in relation to their imagined adult lives. The prioritisation of progression to higher education (and, by extension, professional careers) as the most acceptable ‘aspirations’ to have overlooks the wide range of other ambitions young people have for their adult lives (and how these often rest upon the desire for emotional security and happiness). This disconnection between working class young people's aspirations and those promoted by policy interventions undermines efforts to inspire more working class teenagers to progress to HE and creates greater emotional risk for those that do so.

Keywords:

• widening participation
• aspiration
• geographies of education
• youth
• emotions

Acknowledgements

The research analysed in this paper was funded by the Royal Geographical Society (with Institute of British Geographers) Small Research Grant scheme (for a project entitled ‘The Place of Aspirations: emotional geographies of young people's ambitions for adult life’) and a Research and Development Grant from the Friends of Guy's Hospital. I am grateful to both organisations for their generous support. Finally, I would like to thank Joseph DeLappe and Peter Kraftl for various conversations that have helped clarify my thoughts about aspirations, and to Helena Pimlott-Wilson and Sarah Holloway for their collaboration on this special issue.