Promoting Change: The ‘Expanded Notion of Work’ as a Proactive Response to the Social Justice Issues in Career Development Practice

This chapter discusses the community-based service provisions of the Career and Life Adventure Planning Project for young people who are NEET (not in employment, education or training) aged 15–21 in Hong Kong. It offers an illustration of how it is possible to promote positive changes for the life and career development of disadvantaged youth. By using an expanded notion of work (ENOW) to critically examine the liberal-individualistic perspective of career guidance, the authors outline how the ENOW can acknowledge personal agency and promote social justice in career interventions. We argue that career guidance and development needs to support services and activities that expand the experiences of users through experiential learning opportunities in the domains of paid work and unpaid work.

The ENOW-informed dual-purpose service model places an emphasis on both personal agency and structural support. On the one hand, the service aims to enhance young people’s capabilities to discover and develop their career pathways towards an optimal mix of paid work, unpaid work, learning and leisure. On the other hand, the service takes the development of an enabling environment as being important to careers interventions. The chapter finishes by giving examples of how partnerships can contribute to the building of an enabling environment for promoting equality of opportunity and social inclusion. We assert that the work of social justice in career development is to offer young people resources, opportunities, networks and experiences for life-career fulfilment, which are relevant to their situations.