Abstract
In this article we analyse what happens to career counselling when it is intertwined with the asylum process. A Swedish example is an amendment to the education legislation, regarding residence permits for upper secondary level students. Following the resulting changes in juridical, educational and interpersonal conditions, career counsellors must deliver ‘high-stakes counselling’ that can profoundly affect individuals’ prospects of asylum or deportation. Our analysis is based on ethnographically inspired fieldwork, a survey and Bernsteinian theory. In current Swedish conditions, tight matching to demands of the labour market is essential in this ‘high-stakes counselling’. We conclude that a consequence is institutional introduction of conditional citizenship of asylum-seeking students. This allows countries to select migrants through education, which severely conflicts not only with counselling ideals, but also democratic and equality values regarding possibilities to make choices for the future, thus creating ethical dilemmas for counsellors.
Highlights
In this article we analyse what happens to counselling when it is co-opted into the asylum process, effects of intertwining the process with students’ career choices and performance
The findings section starts with contextualisation based on the 18 interviews of the other material produced in the project and the Swedish case in relation to the broader sociology of education research published in English, to root the analysis more broadly in accessible knowledge and theoretical understanding of educational institutions
Counselling is used to put a political message into practice and to facilitate structures in the society due to their temporary residence permit (RP), which makes them secondary citizens
Summary
In this article we analyse what happens to counselling when it is co-opted into the asylum process, effects of intertwining the process with students’ career choices and performance We do this by addressing consequences of the Act on Residence Permits for High School Students (hereafter the ARP) (SFS 2017, 353) for career counselling practices in Sweden. Addressed here, is the risk that education may be co-opted to act as a sorting mechanism for migrants, playing a key role in deciding who can stay and who is deported Such changes affect the work of all associated professionals, who have to adapt their individual and collective professional practices, but in this article we focus on effects on the work of career counsellors (hereafter counsellors). Sweden provides illuminating examples of responses to migration flows, including changes to policies and practices introduced by a new law, the Act on Residence Permits for High School Students (SFS 2017, 353). There are four orientations of IPs, three that require merits in Swedish and a language introduction programme (LIP), mainly targeting newly arrived immigrants aged 16-20 years, the focal group in this article
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