ABSTRACT

In this chapter, we analyse in what ways class and gender play out in adult students’ narratives about their occupational choice and future. We approach occupational choice as a component of individual life histories, embedded in specific social contexts. Drawing on the work of Beverly Skeggs, we illustrate how work emerge as norm, as well as a way to care for others in the future. For working-class students, this is often shaped as an obligation, as a way to pay back to society, while the caring aspect is gendered. Even though both male and female students express caring notions as a basis for their occupational choice, for female students, working class as well as middle class, caring in terms of occupation intersect with caring for the family. We also illustrate how middle-class students often vaguely express ideas about future occupation, with a focus on self-realisation, and less on work as obligation and paying back to society. We conclude that the female working-class students seem to describe work as a means of becoming somebody who is respectable in society, while middle-class students’ self-fulfilment tends to be driven by individual self-realisation and the envisioning of a life that is not necessarily aligned with the demands or norms of society in the same way or to the same extent as the working-class (female) students’ narratives.