Enabling resilience: shifting the intergenerational career expectations of South Africans challenged by structural disadvantage

Abstract

South African adults who are challenged by structural disadvantage typically urge the younger generation to aspire toward investment in academic education that will potentiate a lucrative career. Young people are likely to be influenced and guided by such intergenerational social expectations, particularly when their choices are not moderated by career counselling interventions. This process is inherently dangerous, however, when structural impediments obstruct the likelihood of young people's achievement of what was anticipated. Accordingly, I use this position paper to sensitize career counsellors as to how narrow intergenerational career expectations are likely, in challenging the resilience of young people in disadvantaged communities, to raise the odds against their success, and to galvanise career counsellors toward lowering these odds. In particular, I propose that career counsellors envisage disadvantaged communities as their clients, and facilitate a shift in career knowledge and intergenerational career expectations.