Constituting neoliberal subjects? ‘Aspiration’ as technology of government in UK policy discourse

Abstract

Since the 2000s, successive governments in the United Kingdom and elsewhere have embraced the idea of ‘raising aspiration’ among young people as a solution to persisting educational and socio-economic inequalities. Previous analyses have argued that these policies tend to individualise structural disadvantage and promote a ‘deficit’ view of working-class youth. This paper adopts a novel approach to analysing aspiration discourses combining Michel Foucault’s four dimensions of ‘ethics’ and Mitchell Dean’s notion of ‘formation of identities’. Applying Foucault’s and Dean’s work in this way provides a new lens that enables an examination of how policy encourages particular forms of subjectivation, and, therefore, seeks to govern individuals. The findings presented in the paper complicate previous research by showing that raising aspiration strategies portray disadvantaged youth both in terms of ‘deficit ‘and ‘potential’, resulting in a requirement for inner transformation and mobility through attitudinal change. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for the identity formation of young people and for conceptualising contemporary forms of governmentality

Policy misrecognitions and paradoxes: Developing more contextually attuned access and equity policies in Australian higher education

“…The transition from elite to mass education has been important for disadvantaged groups in Australia in terms of absolute numbers, but it takes ongoing commitment to achieve substantial changes in relative representation and inequality (Naylor and James, 2015). The major inequities in higher educationremainin access, with research showing that this is not due to a lack of aspiration (James, 2002; Spohrer, Stahl, and Bowers-Brown, 2018; St Clair and Benjamin, 2011);instead,‘students clearly make pragmatic choices about acting on those aspirations’ (Naylor and James, 2015: 11). Many students from underrepresented backgrounds already have ‘high’ aspirations for university study and careers requiring degrees (Gorard et al., 2007; Whitty and Clement, 2015; Bennett et al., 2015; Bowden and Doughney, 2010; Prosser et al., 2008).…”

Turning around coast-based schools: An interpretive narrative analysis of a report on school reform in English coastal communities

“…However, denigration of certain young people's pathways, for example, those in transition from school to seeking employment in coast-based communities, serves to stigmatise them in terms of achieving little self-improvement. Further, under this deficit perspective it appears that failure to embrace appropriate notions of aspiration is the main impediment to fulfilling their potential through attending further/higher education and hence, social mobility (Spohrer, Stahl & Bowers-Brown, 2018).…”

Social Citizenship Aspirations: An Alternative Line of Analysis of the Social Reproduction of Youth Inequality

“…Strong assumptions exist in contemporary policy and populist discourses, including within the Australian and the wider Global North context, that the perceived ‘aspirational deficits’ of certain groups of young people contribute to their limited social mobility and poorer educational outcomes (Allen & Hollingworth, 2013; Reay, 2013; Spohrer et al, 2017). Such an emphasis reorients the understanding of socio-economic disadvantage from a product of structural inequality in society to an attribute or deficit of the individual (France, 2008; Mills & Pini, 2015).…”

“…Such an emphasis reorients the understanding of socio-economic disadvantage from a product of structural inequality in society to an attribute or deficit of the individual (France, 2008; Mills & Pini, 2015). Sociologists of youth and education have highlighted the limited evidence supporting assumptions about the depressed aspirations of disadvantaged young people (Kintrea et al, 2015), arguing that such conceptualizations further serve to responsibilize the individual, by seeing the problematic area in need of change as residing within young people themselves (Spohrer et al, 2017). Teaching socio-economically disadvantaged young people to have high aspirations is in itself not enough to ensure successful outcomes (Le Gallais & Hatcher, 2014), as aspirations transfer to outcomes primarily via the mobilization of economic, social and cultural resources (Devine, 2004).…”