Keynote presentation at the NVL CMS Conference in Malmö, November 2017

1. Career
competence
aeuropeanperspective
ronald g. sultana
university of malta
malmö - november 2017

2. Key points
1. Career Management Skills: an EU
story
2. Revisiting the CMS narrative
3. Emancipatory work education

3. Career Education & Guidance
in Europe … and beyond
[2000-2015 … ]
 Improving access to guidance
 Career management skills
 Enhancing quality of services
 Co-ordination of services
57and counting…

4. Outputs
 Reports
 Handbooks
 Common guide tools
 Peer learning visits
 National frameworks
 Concept papers
 Political resolutions
 EU Network
(ELGPN)
…policytravel…

5. CMS
Competences that help
individuals and groups
to gather,
analyse,
synthesise,
organise & use
information about
– Self
– Education
– Occupations
Career competences support:
– self-understanding/development
– exploring/dealing life, learning & work
– especially during change & transition
Career competences: awareness
– of what you do
– of what you could do
– of how individuals
> are formed by their activities & actions
> while simultaneously affecting their
own opportunities for the future
(Thomsen, 2014, p.5)
Decision-learning
Opportunity awareness
Transition skills
Self-awareness
DOTS

8. critical reflections…

9. education for work
or
education about work

10. Work is important
because:
 Access to livelihood
 Sense of purpose
 Self-expression / creativity
 Workplace conviviality
 Community membership
 Social recognition / inclusion
 Part of something bigger than
self
 Helps fill the time
Work is
alienating
because: Income at cost of health
 Jobs too small for our spirits
 Profit over nourishment of sel
 Divide and rule
 Social hollowed out
 Extreme individualism
 Notion of ‘arete’ lost
 Non-decent work

11. Impact on CG theory and practice
message
Changes in the
social and
political
environment
Changes in the
economy and
the world of
work
Changes in the
ecosphere and
natural
environment

12.  deepened social gap
 intensified global inequality
 insecurity abounds
 competition vs solidarity
Zygmunt Bauman Richard Sennett
Noam Chomsky
Careers…
In liquid
modernity
 concentration of wealth
 monopolisation of profits
 eroded democracy
 individualisation
‘Careers’ or ‘jobs’? Work, labour or toil?
— intensification — precarity — short-term
— temping — part-time — non-unionized…

14. Mainstream
narrative New spiral ‘career’
Spiral (ideally upward) through:
- different roles
- different organizations
- different skill sets
- Need judgment / resilience /
flexibility…
 Portfolio careers
 Boundaryless careers
 Protean careers
 Automation: disposable careers
 The mobile (rootless) worker at service of globalization
 Choice replaced by career management – life design
 Chameleon careers: employability, not employment…

15. Problems
with this narrative
inevitability generalisability
normativiity

16. normativiity
inevitability
generalisabilit
y
 Change is good
 Benefits all
 Trickle down
 Economic model
 Consumerism
 Self-harm
 Planetary harm
 Objects/subjects
 Who decides?
 No alternative?
 Being vs having
 Reality of class
 Global south
 Informal LM

17. weaving 3
discourses 1989 = 15
2017 = 70

18. Social efficiency
Key words:
 fit, match, supply-demand
 societal needs
 realism, placement
 trait-factor approaches
 competence approaches
Developmentalist
Key words:
 self-fulfilment
 choice
 facilitative
 constructivist approaches
 narrative approaches
Social
reconstructionist
Key words:
 decode/’read’ the world
 critical, reflective practice
 emancipatory
 structural approaches
 advocacy approaches

19. Standpoint
“Give me a lever and I will move the world”
Some ‘fundamentals’:
1. The absolute dignity of the human person
2. Living above a poverty line is minimal condition
3. Life is about expansion of ‘beings’ and ‘doings’
4. Choices should not lead to deprivation
5. Equity trumps equality
6. We are ‘free’ but everywhere we are in chains
7. Some are freer than others to access ‘goodies’
8. Preferential option towards most vulnerable

20.  Theories of social justice
 Critical theory
 Reproduction theories
 Rational choice
 Structuration theory
 Liberation psychology/theology
 Network/social capital theories
 Globalisation/Europeanisation
 Epistemologies of the South
 Foucault (e.g. governmentality)
 Capability approach
Willis, Bourdieu, Boudon, Gambetta, Freire, Santos,
Giddens, Bauman, Sennett, Blau, Foucault, Sen,
Fraser, I.M. Young, Barrò, Gilligan, Butler, Dale &
Critical concepts and paradigms …
Critique impact of neoliberalism | NPM | human capital theory
…

21. emancipatory work education
 Intervention in the lives of people
 Troubling master (hegemonic) narratives – promote reflexivity
 Conscientisation: see how we reproduce societal discourses
 Support in the deconstruction of these narratives
 Reconstruct these narratives to work in community interests
 Recognition and naming of injustice
 Encouraging the ‘capacity to aspire’ (Appadurai), move beyond
‘bounded rationality’ (Simon), and ‘adaptive preferences’
(Nussbaum), contest ‘realistic choices’ (Colley), enhance
‘horizons for action’ (Hodkinson et al.)
 Beyond conscientisation – civic engagement | advocacy

22. emancipatory work education
 Meaning/ nature of work
 Work trends
 Alternative forms of work
 Decent work
 Workers’ rights
 Trade unions
 Gender gaps
 Horizons of possibility
 Brain vs brawn?
 Socialisation of risk
 Work you can build a life on
 Stereotyping
 Capacity to aspire
 Safety, health, wellness
 Why unemployment?
 Globalization
 Deskilling
 Sustainability | ecology
 Work/life balance
 Precarity | austerity
 Social vs ‘heroic’ resilience
 Self-employment

…from denizens to citizens
….….….….….….….….….….……
Work education for social
justice..

23. Resources: https://goo.gl/7xb36o
Publications: www.um.edu.mt/emcer
Contact: ronald.sultana@um.edu.mt
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