Aspiration versus Attainment: Identity Construction Amongst Graduate Scheme Workers

In the UK, as in much of the Western world, young adults are increasing facing a gap between lives they aspire to live and those they can attain. Thus an 'aspiration gap' arises in the face of rising costs of living and diminished economic opportunity. My project will innovate in both subject and method: by using ethnographic methods to research worker identity creation and socialisation in the as-of-yet unexplored field of graduate schemes, I will explore how a gap between aspiration and attainment has emerged, and how this is understood, experienced and managed as individual lived experience.
I will partner with two private-sector organisations, the Institute for Student Employers and Ernst & Young, to study professional graduate schemes, and to join an Ernst & Young scheme to carry out participant observation. My work will be the first to ethnographically situate the 'aspiration gap' problem in a Western context, and will build on the theoretical frameworks of a rich body of anthropological literature and my undergraduate dissertation to create a new area of research, which explores how young people are socialised into the world of work in the UK.
My work will maintain a interdisciplinary focus, as it will be carried out under both the Anthropology department and the Business School to create research with wide-ranging applicability and commercial use. I aim for my findings to be integrated by companies to adjust improve business outcomes and workers' lives, as well as result in improved policy formation."