Learning to Labour in Post-Soviet Russia: Vocational youth in transition

by Walker; Charles

• ISBN13: 9780415479851
• ISBN10: 0415479851
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-12-23
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book explores the changing nature of growing-up working-class in post-Soviet Russia, a country dislocated by the experience of neo-liberal economic reform. Based on extensive ethnographic research in a provincial Russian region, it follows the experiences of vocational education graduates whose colleges continue to channel them into the ailing industrial and agricultural sectors. Rather than settling for transitions into a ~poor worka (TM), the book shows how these young men and women develop a range of strategies aimed at overcoming the poverty of opportunity available to them in traditional enterprises, pursuing instead emerging opportunities in higher education, jobs in the new service sector and the prospect of migration. Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives, Charles Walker analyses these strategies and their significance for wider processes of social change and social stratification in post-Soviet Russia.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 2. The Transition from school to work in theoretical perspective 3. Transitions in transition: young people in emerging markets of labour, education and housing 4. Managing transitions: the IVET system in Ul'ianovsk Oblast 5. Fractured transitions: from inheritance to individualization 6. 'Learning to learn': making and breaking educational transitions 7. Social networks and role playing: the boundaries of transitions and the limits of change 8. Conclusion: Navigating a 'zombie' system