Cold-Shouldering the Discourse: Findings Form a Biographical Study on Early School Leaving (ESL) in Austria

Besides a NEETs-discourse, one on Early School Leavers can be traced back to the early 2000s. The definition is based on a deficit approach: They are defined as 18-24 years olds without upper secondary education who are currently not in education. Accompanying policy efforts, ample research has been conducted to explore reasons for leaving school early and provide evidence for remedial policies. Early School Leavers have thus been addressed as a problem group.

In my PHD thesis I challenge this mainstream view by not pre-supposing ESL as one or ‘the’ life event in their biographies. Beyond that, I approach ESL as discourse which can have an impact on youths – to be explored empirically. Hence, I combine biographical case studies (Rosenthal 2008) and discourse analysis of policy documents from the EU and Austria (Keller et al. 2018). Analyzing 16 biographical interviews with early school leavers aged 16 to 22, I ask how they appropriate (or don’t) the ESL discourse whereas my interest regarding the discourse analysis is on how early leavers are constructed as subjects of policies and assigned specific models of behavior.

In the realm of Austria’s ESL-policy, the dominant discourse claims compliant integration into a system of supportive measures, contested by a discourse on empowerment. Both discourses aim at improving the employment prospects of the subjects. In the biographical study, I developed a typology along how the biographers appropriate the ESL-discourse. One out of five types is the ‘cold-shouldering’: The discourse has been set irrelevant throughout their experiences and their narrations. They develop own life projects regardless of educational requirements.

Rosenthal, Gabriele. 2008. Interpretative Sozialforschung. Eine Einführung. Weinheim, München: Juventa.

Keller, Reiner, Anna-Katharina Hornidge, and Wolf Schünemann, eds. 2018. The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse: Investigating the Politics of Knowledge and Meaning-Making. London: Routledge.