Negotiating and contesting ‘success’: discourses of aspiration in a UK secondary school

Spohrer, Konstanze

doi:10.1080/01596306.2015.1044423

Cited by 18 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Given the dramatic economic upheavals in recent years and the intense positional struggle in the higher ranks of the labour market (Brown 2013), it is questionable whether the promise of social mobility through educational attainment can be realised by the majority of young people. The demand on young people to become mobile by means of 'escaping' their communities questions young people's identities and risks perpetuating the 'cruel optimism' (Berlant 2011) of keeping people in their place by promoting an unachievable fantasy of the 'good life' (Sellar 2013;Spohrer, 2016;Stahl, 2012;Zipin et al 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Spohrer

Stahl

Bowers-Brown

2017

Journal of Education Policy

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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

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Spohrer

Stahl

Bowers-Brown

2017

Journal of Education Policy

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“…A strong theme emerging from conversations in this study was that of aspiration – with both material and symbolic success sought after. T, like others in the study, was part of the generation growing up under New Labour and later successive Conservative-led governments that worked to raise aspirations in schools (Spohrer, 2016). Such aspirations were underpinned by neoliberal values of meritocracy and equality of opportunity.…”

Section: Meditations On the Munpainmentioning

confidence: 77%

Dying to live: Youth violence and the munpain

Bakkali

2019

The Sociological Review

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This article engages with accounts of the everyday experiences of young adults living in London who have been involved with road life (street culture) and how their narratives might help us to better understand issues of youth violence in the UK. Through an exploration of their experiences, this article argues that deeply embedded structural contradictions are leaving a generation of marginalised young people dying to live as they become locked in an existential struggle against a sense of malaise permeating many of their everyday experiences. These experiences of social suffering are conceptualised through ‘the munpain’. The munpain is a psychosocial concept which articulates the impact of structurally routed violence, inherent in late-modern neoliberal states, within the everyday lives of marginalised young adults living in a contemporary urban context. This article draws on interview data from two young men, Stephen and T, who have both been victims of knife crime and have spent much of their lives involved with youth groups self-identifying as gangs. In this article, I demonstrate some of the often unspoken struggles that saturate their lives. These experiences induce agentic responses as people seek to alleviate their suffering, at times affecting them in ways that lead to acts of violence. Moreover, I also elaborate on the inductive methodological approach employed to denote how ‘the munpain’ was developed while working alongside marginalised young adults.

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“…Aspiration is one element of a framework of meritocracy that sees self-work and 'raising aspiration' as the key to unlocking untapped potential. The irony demonstrated in these papers and by others (Mendick, Allen, Harvey, & Ahmad, 2018;Spohrer, 2016), is that the aspirations that young people from disadvantaged socioeconomic groups hold become unobtainable, not because of an individual deficit or a 'lack of aspiration', as the policy discourse espouses, but rather in part because of the lack of coherent policy making which consciously disassociates the relationship between aspiration and material poverty. As Baker argues with clarity, the conflation of meritocracy and economic agendas related to employability compound the 'shift in responsibility' from societal to individual accountability.…”

Section: Higher Education and Aspirationmentioning

confidence: 90%