This paper draws on the fund of regional knowledge about career guidance that comparative research has generated in the "global South". The goal of the paper is to add another voice to the challenge to the universalising language that characterises career guidance theory and practice, and to further highlight the serious attention that…

This paper provides a scoping approach to the issue of career guidance in multicultural societies. It starts off by exploring the meaning of "culture," moving away from "back-pack" approaches that consider culture as a set of worldviews and dispositions that are readily shed or put on, to anthropological understandings of…

Career guidance claims a lineage to "modernity", where individuals carve dignified lives for themselves, irrespective of social origin. Here, "social justice" has particular connotations, relating to the meritocratic redistribution of resources in ways that reward ability and effort. This article explores alternative…

This article sets out to trigger research and policy attention among the career guidance community to the increasingly important notion of "flexicurity". It first explores the different meanings of the term, particularly as these have evolved in discussions across the European Union. It then goes on to consider why…

This paper argues that the current articulation of the lifelong career guidance paradigm stands in danger of uncritically reflecting core agendas underpinning neo-liberalism as well as New Public Management principles. It highlights the distinctions that ought to be drawn between seeing the user of career guidance services as a "customer",…

This paper considers some of the debates surrounding the term competence and the relevance that these have for the development of competence frameworks. Such frameworks are increasingly on the agenda, since they purport to support training programme development, to identify competence gaps, to promote self-development, and to ensure common…

This paper engages in a series of critical self-reflections on the author's involvement in the spate of career guidance reviews that have taken place since the year 2000, and which were commissioned by such supra-national entities as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and various agencies and directorates of the…

The history of the involvement of the European Union in the development of policy related to career guidance is analysed in terms of three broad periods. In the first two of these, interventions were confined to pilot projects, exchanges and placements, study visits and studies/surveys, with particular attention to young people; whereas the period…

This paper discusses the way career guidance is conceived across Europe as a policy instrument that can facilitate social inclusion. It locates current articulations of career guidance within the broader social-market aspirations of the European Union, providing an account of several reviews and analyses of the field that have been carried out at…

Career management skills (CMS) are increasingly touted as necessary for all citizens, young and adult, particularly given the realities of employment and self-employment in a knowledge-based society, where "protean", "portfolio" careers are expected to increasingly become the norm, and lifelong career guidance an entitlement of…