Career aspirations and educational expectations and choices of young people in a crisis context

Abstract

This article reviews the concepts of aspiration, expectation and choice in order to better understand the mechanisms that lead to the construction of youth paths. The empirical contrast is based on a survey of more than 2,056 young people in the city of Barcelona from the 4th year of secondary school (born in 1998), a panel dataset comparing the expectations of young people and their choices in the following year. Crosstab tables and a Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) have been used to present the results with greater robustness. The results show a remarkable diversity of situations, but only 12% answered that they had no idea about their profession at the age of 30, and 52% answered that they would like a profession that requires university studies. Of those who have a more or less definite idea, 50% make coherent choices in the short term, the rest do not. Both aspiration and consistency with choice are strongly related to parents' academic performance and educational level, but there are also situations of unexpected expectations and choices. The results question the idea that presenteeism is a majority attitude, and the expectation associated with educational investment as a lever for social mobility is maintained with sufficient robustness, although with significant differences according to social origin.