As mentioned in Section 1.6, the concept of agency has been hotly contested and carries different meanings (Côté, 2014b). It has also been frequently associated with individualisation (Woodman and Wyn, 2014). Individualisation is one of the most discussed, (mis)interpreted and criticised concepts in youth studies (Woodman and Wyn, 2014, p. 42). It is posited that identity is transformed from a ‘given’ into a ‘task’ and that individuals are encouraged to take responsibility for this task (Bauman, 2000, p. 31). (A detailed analysis of the thesis is provided in Section 2.4.1.) Woodman and Wyn summarise the recent debates concerning the individualisation thesis in two parts. Firstly, the thesis correctly identifies some significant changes that have occurred in the Global North, particularly a greater ‘messiness’ or non-linearity in the institutionalised pattern of young lives. Secondly, failing to recognise the far more significant unchanging nature of inequality, it exaggerates the extent of change and the capacities of individual agency (2014, p. 37). The role of agency is fundamental to debates regarding the relationship between individualisation and youth
inequalities. In turn, the dilemmas and contradictions emerging from these debates provide opportunities to rethink the conceptualisation of agency in youth studies.
Woodman describes a ‘theoretical orthodoxy’ (Farrugia, 2013, p. 681) in youth sociology which pitted Beck’s work against the allegedly more structurally-oriented work of Bourdieu. Individualisation has been interpreted by many youth researchers as a claim that structural constraints have been de-emphasised or denied as an influence on life chances, and that individual choices play a larger role in shaping outcomes. In response to what they perceive as the celebration of agency, authors such as Lehmann (2004) and Brannen and Nilsen (2005) present empirical evidence that young people’s biographies and identities still vary according to the continued importance of social structures like class and gender. Beck’s individualisation also gives rise to the concept of ‘choice biography’, which was first pointed out by Manuela du Bois-Reymond (1995). The ‘choice biography’ is contrasted with the ‘normal biography’, which represents the relatively predictable and linear life course. In the contemporary Global North, ‘choice biographies’ emerge in the assumed weakening of institutional structures and appear more open to conscious decision making (Woodman, 2009). Steven Roberts argues that individualisation is vastly overemphasising the agency and change that is freeing young people from social constraints (Roberts, 2010, p. 137). For te Riele, ‘Beck’s concept of the choice biography can be hazardous’ for it ignores the constraints on the choices available to young people and emphasises choices and rewards, rather than risks and penalties (2004, p. 246). McLeod and Yates (2006) believe that choice biographies are ‘replacing proscribed roles and futures’ (p. 84), and they draw on feminist critiques to suggest that Beck’s claims of detraditionalisaton and reflexivity are overstated. Substantial evidence has been provided to show that class, gender and race continue to shape young lives.
However, Woodman argues that the concept of choice biography is a product of misreading Beck’s work. It tends to function as a ‘foil in a constant reinvention of a middle ground between structure and agency’, showing that the old divisions do indeed matter (Woodman, 2009, p. 253). The criticism that Beck over-emphasises choice neglects his statements that the individualisation he is proposing cannot be considered in terms of choice. Beck argues that the ‘“do-it-yourself biography” does not necessarily happen by choice, neither does it necessarily succeed’ (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1996, p. 25). The ‘do-it-yourself biography’ is always a ‘risk biography’, which is in ‘a state of permanent (partly overt, partly concealed) endangerment’ (1996, p. 25). Far from denying social structure and overstating freedom of choice, Woodman and Wyn note that Beck theorises the institutional change that
is translated into individual biography with increasing risk and danger. They argue that individualisation is not a theory of agency but of ‘changing social institutions’, a theory that can be used and tested only ‘through doing the difficult work of showing not only that but also how social position shapes young lives’ (Woodman and Wyn, 2014, p. 42). They argue that the individualisation thesis ‘provides new insights into the changing relationships between individuals and institutions’ as well as ‘a new starting point for conceptualising the changing experience of youth’ (2014, p. 38). It can be understood as a framework for investigating how social factors shape patterns of inequality in late modernity.
The above debates in youth studies around agency and individualisation present what Coffey and Farrugia (2014) refer to as ‘a worrying move away from the nuanced perspectives on agency’ and towards ‘unproductive dichotomies between “agency” and “structure”’ (p. 463). However, recent efforts at resolving the structure and agency disjuncture have frequently taken the form of calls for ‘middle-ground’ conceptual approaches (Coffey and Farrugia, 2014). These approaches draw on concepts such as ‘bounded agency’ (Evans, 2002; 2007) or ‘structured individualisation’ (Roberts, 1995; Rudd and Evans, 1998) as ways of overcoming this dilemma. This perspective aims to address the issue of ‘social determinism versus individualisation and reflexivity in social biography’ (Evans, 2007, p. 92), and ‘explore the relative contributions of agency (input from young adults themselves on an individual basis) and structure (input from organisations at a national and local level, the effects of labour markets and influences of broad social characteristic such as gender and social class) in the research participants’ life and work transitions’ (Behrens and Evans, 2002, p. 18). However, this middle-ground approach has also been subjected to criticism within the field. In their paper, Coffey and Farrugia (2014) point out the inconsistencies and contradictions of Evans’s conceptualisation of agency. In Evans’s studies, agency is initially described as a subjective feeling or belief that young people possess; yet it could also be identified by those behaviours which go against current social patterns (Evans, 2002). Coffey and Farrugia argue that this approach not only fails to explain young people’s agency or the dimensions of structures that ‘bound’ this agency, but it also makes the conception of agency more mysterious and ambiguous (2014, p. 465).
As mentioned in Section 2.2.3, in this study, the choice-making process of vocational youth will be analysed within the context of China’s neoliberal economic reform. There is strong evidence that in neoliberal countries across the world, the assumption that young people should take full responsibility for themselves and their own future has become normalised (Furlong and Cartmel, 1997; Ball et al., 2000). Individualised responsibility is an important
element in the neoliberal ideology that is the dominant narrative in capitalist economies (Harvey, 2005, p. 76), where everyone is expected to be an ‘entrepreneurial self’, living by ‘the promise of success and the threat of failure’—just like a business, in fact (Bröckling, 2015, p. xiv). The concept of agency is interestingly close to that of the ‘responsibilisation of the self’ (Rose, 1992). This study intends to challenge the usefulness of the conceptualisation of agency, especially the middle ground position, which has been hotly contested in youth studies (presented above and in Section 1.3), by analysing the lives of Chinese vocational youth and their capacity to make choices and take responsibility under the influence of a neoliberal ideology. In order to better understand what is going on with this group of students, rather than taking the “traditional” route of investigation, which potentially contributes to the ‘worrying’ and ‘unproductive’ debates mentioned above (Coffey and Farrugia, 2014), this study constructed a theoretical alternative in an attempt to make sense of the young people’s lived experiences and perspectives. The next section will discuss this framework in detail.