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Abstract
The ideal–typical distinction of normal/choice biography has been adopted by many youth researchers over the last 17 years as a means of approaching how vocational adolescents take decisions in a context in which life transitions are reversible and unsafe. In this article, we aim to show that this distinction is overestimated, by focusing on a specific problem current research has brought to the fore. While the agency of working-class adolescents until the 80’s resulted in social reproduction without their habitus being threatened by this intergenerational class continuity, what can we say concerning how today’s working-class adolescents’ identities are formed, given that they remain in vocational schools for a long time? Through life history interviews with 18-year-old vocational adolescents, we examine the reasons why biographical reflexivity plays a crucial role in habitus formation in ‘normal’ biographies and in their decision-making when they face turning points during their school years. We throw light on the narrative devices through which vocational adolescents are trying to reconcile in their identities the embodied skills they acquire in disadvantaged lifeworlds with the official knowledge vocational training offers. We argue that these devices set in motion a kind of biographical ambivalence which we consider to be crucial regarding their life transitions.
Notes
1. Quantitative data were drawn from Hellenic Statistic Authority and in particular from the tables http://www.statistics.gr/el/statistics/-/publication/SJO19/ and http://www.statistics.gr/el/statistics/-/publication/SED25/, last retrieval on 07/01/2016. Very helpful on the trends regarding work transitions of vocational adolescents in Greece was the annual report of the Educational Policy Development Centre, see details in http://www.kanep-gsee.gr/sitefiles/files/2015_ekth.pdf, last retrieval on 09/01/2016
2. see (a) CEDEFOP, Research paper no 32, publication number 5532, Labour market outcomes of vocational education in Europe and (b) CEDEFOP. Future skill supply in Europe. Medium-term forecast up to 2020: synthesis report.