The Complex Relationship Between Training Provision and Work

Abstract

This text derives from a research project begun in 2003, in which, through an interpretive methodology, we have examined the social representations of youth sectors regarding their labor prospects. This is a compelling issue because a recounting of the century just concluded reveals the accumulation of so-called unfulfilled promises, perhaps promises that were in fact impossible to fulfill. The idea that greater training somehow guarantees access to employment loses credibility as the complex relationship between education and employability is analyzed.

Just as the unfulfilled promise of well-being, coined during years of prosperity in wealthy countries, later led to great frustration, so too the promise that personal effort in job training leads to employment contains the fallacy of placing success in the actions carried out by each individual to prepare for productive insertion. In this way, the social body and the government officials to whom society has delegated its representation are relieved of responsibility for the articulation between the training provision and the world of work.

It is widely recognized that an absent state opens spaces for differentiated and, at the same time, confusing employment policies, which multiply imbalances and inequalities, bringing profitability, marketing, and organizational variables into play before work-training coordinates. Our inquiry has shown that both marginalized young people and postgraduate students, supposedly overqualified, find it difficult to determine whether their preparation for work should be oriented toward the search for specific personal competencies, basically transferable skills, the development of unexplored niches, interdisciplinary exchanges, management structures, and so on. When work-training policies operate through omission rather than through positive action, the training provision faces increasing difficulties in articulating itself with the fabric of labor.