Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-5g6vh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-28T00:28:37.629Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Making Choices to Make a ‘Future’: How Community, the Valley, and the Nation Frame Possibilities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2016

Ola Erstad
Affiliation:
Universitetet i Oslo
Øystein Gilje
Affiliation:
Universitetet i Oslo
Julian Sefton-Green
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
Hans Christian Arnseth
Affiliation:
Universitetet i Oslo
Get access

Summary

Chapter 7 examines the kinds of choices that young people in Groruddalen were required to make at different stages of their school careers. We examine accounts of future possibilities and constraints: locally, in terms of how they see themselves within the valley; nationally, in terms of their projected future lives in Norway; and internationally, in relation to global networks of people and resources. These dimensions relate to social geography and mobility - to how young people and their families see the Groruddalen in relation to their futures. This is then set against a perspective of families who are part of global immigration flows but who, having arrived to settle in Norway, see their futures as lying within or beyond its shores. Making choices is often presented to young people in an existential fashion as being about what they want to do or to be. However, we focus more on how choice is framed as a series of decisions, a process of choosing between concrete options, both in the short and long term, and between places, institutions, and local versus global routes. Together these decisions are seen to foreclose or open up other possible narratives about the future.
Type
Chapter
Information
Learning Identities, Education and Community
Young Lives in the Cosmopolitan City
, pp. 165 - 192
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2016

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×