“Sobre el futuro”: Discursos y prácticas laborales de estudiantes de liceos técnico-profesionales en tres claves de desigualdad

Abstract

This article analyzes the occupational discourses and practices of a group of students in last years of a technical-professional high school specialization in Chile. The analysis is conducted following the guidelines of the biographical approach, with a special emphasis on three axes or domains of inequality (socioeconomic, gender, and territorial) when examining how the participants imagine their future work trajectories. The methodology adopted included biographical interviews with students attending three technical-professional secondary schools located in the Metropolitan Region and the analysis is developed by employing the comparative biographical perspective. Results reveal the views that these young people construct regarding their preparation for work, the educational trajectories that they follow to achieve this aim, and their future work projections. The article also includes a contextual analysis of job market transformations and of how these young people see this setting within the framework of other inequalities associated with access to employment, future salaries, and the types of contracts that they aspire to sign, aspects embedded in their self-definitions as young people from "vulnerable contexts".