Making space for place in school-to-work transitions research

This chapter proposes that the contemporary theoretical approach to SWTs should include spatial notions and especially place, side by side with context, person, and time, as an explicit factor influencing SWTs. The chapter starts by discussing and delimiting different notions that circulate in the literature, such as space, territory, and place, to set the current conceptual framing of fragmented spatial elements in the SWT research. Afterwards, the chapter explores how SWT analysis has addressed notions of space and territory, offering an analytical lens from economic geography and multilevel governance studies. This section of the chapter specifically highlights the lack of place as a constitutive, specific element of SWT discussions, in favour of an overemphasis on the role of social structures, and to what degree they are institutionalised. The chapter then focuses on the existing, inspiring, but also limited evidence regarding the role of place in the SWT and how that can inform individual agency in the process of becoming a worker. This section refers to recent interdisciplinary evidence building upon the notions of emotional geographies, place attachment, or soft infrastructures.