Navigating the Maze – Reflexivity as a Critical Skill in Spatialised Youth Transitions

In contemporary debates on educational quality, learning outcomes are often framed in terms of measurable competences and performance indicators. However, this approach fails to identify reflexivity as a key learning outcome and a central transversal skill in today’s fast-changing and increasingly uncertain societies. Reflexivity is required for identifying and mobilising the knowledge and competences needed to reach one’s goals, and it necessitates understanding the surrounding opportunity structures. Further, we maintain that policy measures can impede or promote reflexivity, which is embedded in institutional arrangements and socio-spatial contexts. We explored 1) how young people in vulnerable situations displayed reflexivity in educational and school-to-work transitions and disruptions in differing regions in Austria, Finland, and Portugal, and 2) how their reflexivity was supported, ignored, or hindered by their lived experiences of educational and labour market policies and practices. The comparative design enabled examining how distinct transition regimes and socio-spatial configurations shape the development and limits of reflexivity. Our data consist of biographical narrative interviews with young people in vulnerable situations (N=67). From qualitative thematic analysis, three key themes emerged: 1) opportunities for reflexivity on educational pathways, 2) reflexivity on individual vulnerabilities, and 3) (lacking) institutional support for reflexivity. The results highlight that reflexivity is shaped by interactions between individual characteristics, structural barriers, policy frameworks, and spatial inequalities. Institutional support is often uneven, fragmented, or misdirected across and within the countries – and often fails to reach those in most vulnerable situations. Thus, the low levels of youth reflexivity we observed were not individuals’ shortcomings or lacking abilities but reflected structurally conditioned opportunities for reflexive engagement. This article contributes to comparative debates on educational quality by demonstrating how learning outcomes are socially constructed through the interaction of actors, policies, and spaces.