Distance and mastery: poetic inquiry of young people’s subjectification processes

An increasing number of young people under 30 do not complete upper secondary education and have difficulty gaining a foothold on the labour market. Hence, there is great interest, politically as well as academically, in finding out ‘what works’ in terms of helping young people. At the same time, however, there is also a lack of research that examines the processes these young people are involved in and the context that has an effect on these. By applying the method of poetic inquiry, this article examines subjectifications processes that have education as the focal point. Poetic inquiry provides an opportunity to explore and construct ‘evocative’ and ‘polyvocal’ analyses of the young people’s subjectification processes in the current employment policy context. The analyses demonstrate how different forms of ‘distance’ occur and how the young people simultaneously are trying to master these.