CLASIFICACION DE LOS BIENES DEL ESTADO

Holland et al.’s application of Bakhtin’s concepts of voices and “multi-voicedness” are useful in depicting the different voices individuals draw upon. Graduates are required to make sense of multiple voices that exist in society, the media, and universities. This chapter has categorised these voices using the intersection of Tholen’s (2014) victim and responsible agent, and Brown et al.’s (2004) player and purist. Notably, while participants do often appear ventriloquated by authoritative individualistic ideas about employability, especially associated with the responsible agent, there is also evidence of an ability to think critically as some move between different voices in the orchestration of an “internally persuasive discourse”. Responses by graduates to the competing voices around employability and careers are complex and dynamic which reflects the difficult terrain in which they find themselves.

In reflecting upon the data, the two voices that appear to have the strongest attraction across participants are that of the purist/responsible agent and the player/victim. Reflecting back on the literature discussed in chapter two, the former resonates with the protean career orientation (Baruch, 2014; Hall, 2004) and the latter of precarity (Standing, 2014) and/or being a disappointed consumer (Tomlinson, 2014). Arguably, both voices capture the differential ideological positioning of an individually-constituted career, and how the same career could be considered as both of these simultaneously depending on the “positionality” and perspective of the career author and/or their observer. Both are materially the same career, as each foregrounds the individual as navigator of uncertain contextual terrain, and present different aspects of neoliberalism. The protean career orientation can be considered to put a superficially benign framing around neoliberal ideas of the individual, depicted by Tholen (2014) as the responsible agent, with the implication that such a perspective is unleashing the individual to be true to themselves according to their own values and success criteria. However, precarity lurks behind such positivity; despite many graduates espousing a protean orientation, this may not be enough to carve a career in competitive, unequal, crowded and uncertain environments. Some participants do position themselves more explicitly as being in precarious situations in which they are obliged to be more reactive than pro- active, with an overwhelming feeling that context is against them, which can also lead to blaming others, such as the university or employer practices.

Despite its neoliberal overtones the protean career orientation, depicted in this chapter’s voices as the purist/responsible agent, does allow participants to adopt an approach to career that escapes the narrow discourses that predominate in the public

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policy domain about graduates, in which success is defined as being in a graduate level job categorised by standard occupational classifications. The protean career orientation gives emphasis to more subjective notions of career with an emphasis on values and pro-activity. It has the potential to describe participants such as Matthew who say they have purposely chosen the insecurity of self-employed work over a more traditional organisational career, or those such as Isabelle who have chosen to give priority to personal development through travel. The protean career orientation does resonate with Beck’s (2000) work on the new world of work and the need to pragmatically adapt to the decline of traditional full-time, waged or salaried work. Interestingly, although the theory has been in existence for two decades and echoes a neoliberalist focus on the individual, it is not a concept that is drawn upon in university approaches to employability, though arguably it could be a useful in explicitly helping students think through the role of values and pro-activity in career trajectories which could avert damaging wellbeing consequences for those who do not have conventional career advancement. Arguably, the current policy domain around employability pushes graduates to a player/victim voice, in which graduates are encouraged to expect that studying for a degree may give them a certain outcome as a consumer, and that if this does not emerge somebody or something else is to blame. It is possible to observe this is Charlie’s damning critique of the creative industries, and Alice’s sense of frustration with the small northern town she is located in, and Ibrahim’s sense that he has been “mis-sold adulthood”.

In considering how graduates may be able to develop agency, through the voices they orchestrate, Holland et al.’s thinking tool of “ruptures” is useful in describing how this can trigger the development of individuals’ “internally persuasive discourse”, as they test out existing voices critically. This line of enquiry seems of particular contemporary value as wider society/economy witnesses fractures in what is taken-for-granted. It is possible that it is where such “ruptures” occur, newer ways of being and thinking can emerge through “internally persuasive discourses” which may lead to what Holland et al. call “making worlds” or “figuring it otherwise”. Arguably, such cognitive struggle allows for a response to the limitations of dominant neoliberal ideas of individualism which admonish individuals to take charge of their lives, while also behaving as a consumer. As they deal with the challenges they face, some graduates appear to be searching for meaningful alternative explanations to the tropes associated with meritocracy and competition which risk leading them nowhere.

In summary, the purist/responsible agent voice which echoes of the protean career orientation does resonate with participants’ desire to explain a more subjective and

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values-oriented approach to career. While still deferring to dominant individualist ideas, employing the protean career language, can ameliorate a sense of having a career that falls short of imagined objective career success. Similarly, utilising language of the player/victim which connects to precarity and consumerism can allow for individuals to explain away poor career circumstances as being attributable to the socio-economic and political context surrounding the labour market, or being poorly prepared for work by their university degree. My pairing of the precarious and protean concepts purposely addresses the tensions around voices about careers which these two concepts from the literature evoke well.

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