Abstract
Much empirical literature describe how future thinking is shaped by structure. However, the ways in which relational and structural embeddedness come to bear down on disadvantaged young people’s aspirations still lack specificity. Looking through the lens of aspirational horizons, this paper seeks to texture our understanding of how aspirations become shaped and stunted, with the subjective accounts of young people experiencing socio-economic disadvantage. The findings from this study suggest that limited exposure and opportunities, lack of social resources and material inequalities associated with living in a rural town or disadvantaged neighbourhoods dovetail to create limited aspirational horizons and imaginations about the future. This suggests a powerful affinity between structural conditions and cultural ideas of the good life, emphasizing that it is not low expectations that constrain choice, but dominant cultural and socio-economic conditions inducing a lowering of future aspirations. Additionally, the inability to experience oneself as the author of one’s destiny appears to be a profound constraint on the participants’ aspirational horizons.
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Notes
Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning is an alternative to mainstream educating, which is vocational focused and offers a more flexible learning program.
The Higher School Certificate (HSC) is the credential awarded to secondary school students who successfully complete senior high school level studies (Years 11 and 12 or equivalent) in New South Wales, Australia.
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An Australian Postgraduate Awards (APA) PhD scholarship was awarded to the author.
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This study was approved by the University of Melbourne Human Research Ethics Review Committee and all procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Moensted, M.L. Examining Aspirational Horizons: Desirable and Achievable Futures for Disadvantaged Young People. JAYS 3, 65–78 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43151-020-00008-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43151-020-00008-2