Human capitalisation in activation: Investing in the bodies, selves and skills of unemployed youth in Finland

Abstract

This article analyses how processes of 'human capitalisation' work in various labour-market activation services aimed at young people in Finland. Drawing on multi-site ethnographic research on activating workshops, public employment services, and career counselling for youth in the Helsinki metropolitan region of Finland in 2014-2016, we trace sites and instances of human capitalisation. Capturing processes through which previously non-economic areas of life become economised, human capitalisation marshals abilities, skills, knowledge and a consumeristic understanding of self-responsibility. Its promise is a more flexible workforce that can be adjusted to the varied demands of the labour market in the future. Taking a Foucauldian approach to governmentality, our research demonstrates that activation practices focus on generating a form of human capital that enhances a particular relation to and understanding of one's self, body and skills.

Emerging Multi-Professional Assemblages of Precision Guidance Producing the Resilient and Future-Oriented Citizen

“…The forces and various resources mobilised within this line are fuelled by a neoliberal logic underlining young people's employability and entrepreneurship, in other words their potential as educated, trained and flexible human capital and a workforce which will ensure economic growth (European Commission, 2016a, 2017bOrganisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2019). Within this neoliberal logic, the lack of future orientation becomes problematic as interest in one's future potential is the foundation of various activation, guidance and coaching activities, which are based on and aim to produce entrepreneurial subjectivities (Paju, Näre, Haikkola, & Krivonos, 2020;Mäkinen, 2016). The lack of a future was also problematised by the professionals we interviewed through their observations of young people not having any 'dreams', 'aspirations' or long-term life goals.…”

“…(professional group interview 2014) Future orientation is to be considered as a responsibilising and individualising regime of thought, within which the problems can be seen as the fault of the young individuals themselves. Young people were accused of not investing in their future, their yet-to-come potential, which is the currency of value-exchange within the capitalist systems of labour and employment (Paju et al, 2020).…”

A Quest for Passion: Understanding Precarious Migration of Young Highly Qualified EU Citizens as Lived Neoliberal Subjectivity

“…The way in which the discourse of employability has informed policies since the 1980s is closely linked to the processes on neoliberalisation under which it is positioned as a condition for work, welfare (Leonardi and Chertkovskaya, 2017) and, more recently, internationalisation and transnational mobility (Bamberger et al, 2019; Nikunen, 2017; Yoon, 2014). Referring to an individual’s ability to attain employment and transit between jobs, the concept of employability implies a shared understanding of individuals’ need to cultivate their own human capital and, in this way, to be or become autonomous, self-responsible, self-improving and self-enterprising agents in ‘flexible’ labour markets (Paju et al, 2020). Bradley and Devadason (2008) show how the associated rhetoric of adaptability and requirement for ‘lifelong learning’ are internalised by young people exposed to labour market insecurity (also Kelly, 2006).…”

“…This article considers young people’s intra-EU migration in the light of literature investigating the ways in which individual subjectivities are constituted under neoliberalism, and how such neoliberal subjectivities are lived out (e.g. Kelly, 2006; Paju et al, 2020; Rose, 1999; Scharff, 2016). From a governmentality perspective, intra-EU mobility policies and discourses appear as mechanisms of power that function through augmenting opportunities and choices for young people while, in parallel, encouraging forms of self-developing subjectivity (Foucault, 2008; Rose, 1998).…”

“…In critical social research the concept of employability has been associated with the hegemonic neoliberal imperative that every individual should be or become, in Foucault’s (2008) terms, an enterprising subject, continuously working to improve the self as means of achieving a life defined by ‘fulfillment, excellence and achievement’ (Leonardi and Chertkovskaya, 2017; Paju et al, 2020; Rose, 1998: 154). Studies from distinct contexts of transnational youth migration have subsequently explored how young people’s contemporary desire to become ‘international’ is both constituted and being triggered by this hegemonic discourse of self-developing subjectivity (Haverig, 2011; Yoon, 2014).…”