Struggles in Becoming Employable: Non-Traditional Student Narratives of the Transition from Higher Education to Working Life in Sweden

Agnieszka Bron,Camilla Thunborg

doi:10.5817/sp2020-4-8

Abstract

The notion of employability has been dominating the higher education policies and strategies of the European Union and other western countries for two decades. From an employability perspective, individuals are responsible for acquiring the skills to find and move between jobs, market themselves, and effectively express their social, personal, and cultural capital. This article focuses on non-traditional students' perspectives of their transition from higher education to working life, especially on the pathways they have taken and the struggles they have experienced in becoming employable. A biographical learning perspective is used to analyse biographical interviews with five female students who were 25 years of age or older, with a non-Swedish background, studying full time. In the students' stories, four transition pathways from higher education to working life were identified: a linear, a parallel, a further education, and a changing career pathway. The five non-traditional students struggled with becoming employable and seemed to be anxious about not being good enough at Swedish; being an outsider as a student; being overqualified; and facing discrimination in the labour market. These employability struggles mainly arise due to the assumption that all graduates are young, Swedish, without children or disabilities, and competing only with their employability within an equal labour market. Thus, the notion of employability still gives little attention to non-traditional students and has negative consequences for them.

Highlights

The article is based on data gained from the EMPLOY European research project concerning the employability of non-traditional students (NTSs), i.e. underrepresented groups in higher education (HE) in terms of age, class, disability, ethnicity, and gender
As our article consists of eight in-depth interviews with five students, we focused on the variations of their biographies, transition pathways, and employability struggles as NTSs in HE
From our analyses of the transitions, we elaborated on the concept of transition pathways as specific periods of movements and changes between HE and working life, and identified the linear, parallel, further education, and changing career pathways

Summary

Introduction

The article is based on data gained from the EMPLOY European research project concerning the employability of non-traditional students (NTSs), i.e. underrepresented groups in higher education (HE) in terms of age, class, disability, ethnicity, and gender. In a recent study from the UK, Brooks (2019) critically explores the influence of class, gender, and ethnicity on student engagement with graduate employment opportunities. She suggests that student engagement with the graduate labour market is complex and nuanced, with class, gender, and ethnicity intersecting to influence outcomes; she identifies three groups of behaviour. The first group decided to postpone engagement with the graduate labour market until after they had finished their degree; the second group engaged with employment opportunities but were unable to secure a graduate-level job; and the third

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