Staying in Place or Moving Forward? Young Women’s Imagined Futures and Aspirations for Mobility in Care Work

Abstract

This article analyses how the culturally widespread incitements to become aspirational and mobile are negotiated by young women in the vocational nursing education in Finland. Drawing on interviews with final year students, the article examines their imagined futures and asks how lived inequalities shape their aspirations and possibilities of navigating the neoliberalising care labour market that is marked by stark hierarchies and diminishing resources. The paper finds that the participants’ aspirations were characterised by the considerations of whether to remain as a practical nurse or to move forward to higher education. Yet, while some women were able to adopt a strong ethos of moving forward, others were more likely to be seen as fixed in place in auxiliary care work. The article pushes forward the debate on youth aspirations and mobility by unpacking the lived contradictions that shape the aspirations of young women entering the lower end of the care labour market.