Educational Problems and Their Importance in the Context of Young Poles Experiencing Precariousness

Abstract

The article focuses on exploring the relationship between experiencing educational problems in the course of life and precariousness in further professional career of young Poles. My primary interests are concentrated around the biographical experience in the spheres of education (especially in the context of young Polish workers undertaking studies) and work. I examine how the educational problems that were present at different educational levels may affect life stories and how they could be linked with the struggling on the labor market, and how they eventually led to increasing exposure toward precarious conditions as well as, finally, the potential of trajectory of suffering. In the analysis, I am using biographical narrative interview conducted with Julian, a young precarious worker who failed to obtain a university degree. My main argumentation is that educational problems he had faced during his studies are in complex loop with his precarious situation on the labor market and led him to experience subsequent phases of the trajectory of suffering. On the other hand, I examine the role of the myth of university degree as a generational driver of upward class mobility.