This post was written by Marcelo Afonso Ribeiro of the University of São Paulo, Brazil. In it he discusses career guidance, social justice and the coronavirus in the context of Brazil.

Tristram Hooley, Ronald Sultana and Rie Thomsen’s article plays an important role in connecting the field of career guidance and counselling to the emerging and urgent dialogue about the global crisis generated by the coronavirus. After all, two key dimensions of everybody’s life are being radically challenged: their life and working projects. States and nations seek to understand the ongoing phenomenon, clearly making some parameters for this discussion. Like the mentioned authors, I intend to make a brief and unfinished discussion. Nevertheless, based on the thoughts, research and experiences of someone who lives in Brazil in a context which is characterised by high levels of social inequalities, informality, unemployment and restricted state support (see the World Employment and Social Outlook – Trends 2019). I chose four key points for the discussion, which are highlighted by the social and economic outcomes generated by the pandemic.

Inequality and the new normal

First, the contests between state models with a greater emphasis on social development policies versus models with a greater emphasis on economic development policies with a continuum ranging from extreme to extreme (see the work of Antunes on Brazil and Touraine on global change. This dilemma is built from two conflicting interests. On the one hand, globalisation and productivism (economic development), and, on the other hand, the defence of basic human rights (social development), among them, the right to work and, preferably, to decent work. This issue has emerged in a false dilemma posed by two different positions to combat the pandemic, namely: whether we should think first of the economy and then of people’s health, or vice versa. It is important to say that there is no economy without health and no health without economy. The issue of quarantine, social distancing and self-isolation as strategies to combat the pandemic is at the heart of this dilemma. This brings back the issue of who works for whom, that is, should citizens work to guarantee the full functioning of the state or should the state work to guarantee the well-being of the population?

I agree with the assumption that, in the capitalist system, no economic development equals no social development. However, without social development, economic development cannot be sustained. That is, people should always be the very end of any state action (in the context of the pandemic, health guaranteed should come first and be supported by a guaranteed minimum income for all). The adoption of neoliberal policies in contexts of marked social inequality, such as Brazil, prevents any possibility of emancipation through working for most people.

In the field of career guidance and counselling, the use of strategies which exclusively aim to foster adjustment or adaptation prevent any chance of social emancipation, as they tell people to accommodate themselves to what society has afforded to them without offering the option to try to transcend this socio-economically defined place. In this sense, the crisis that the pandemic created is a great opportunity to question the current normal and to start to think about what the new normal will look like. At this point, part of constructing the new normal would be the deconstruction of the ongoing institutionalisation and consolidation of two antagonistic groups of people in the world. Those who deserve rights (full members of society) and those who must be content to work without rights (non-full members of society), with a transitional group that claims to be a full member of society. In this line of reasoning, rights would be privileges for some (those who are most qualified and best positioned socially by meritocracy), while the vast majority would have no rights and should be content with a precarious life and work (e.g. migrants in Europe and half of the economically active population in Brazil). This legitimises social injustice based on the argument that ‘you are not like us, so you can be exploited’, as stated in a personal correspondence with me by Monica Budowski and Sebastian Schief about the  findings of their research. I disagree with this position and believe that everyone should have access to fundamental rights and the state should guarantee minimum conditions for that. I agree with Hooley, Sultana and Thomsen that career guidance and counselling work is a privileged space for helping in the construction of this new normal. An important way to achieve this is helping people to challenge and transcend the dominant neoliberal mechanisms and contributing to the critical awareness that individualising social protection is impossible for most of the world population. Besides that, I emphasise that career guidance and counselling need to broaden the help that they offer for informal and precarious workers (those who have neither a job nor a decent work).

What is freedom of choice?

Second, the contests between social, political and cultural models, mainly between Western models and Asian models. In these contests, the control and tutelage that the state must exercise in a dichotomy between individual freedom and state control are at stake, with degrees between these extremes. That is, a reduced state control with greater accountability of people for their own lives (neoliberalism) versus greater state control (e.g., United States’ model versus China’s model).

In the field of career guidance and counselling, this issue appears in discussions of freedom of choice and autonomy. We must ask ourselves some questions. The first question is: What is freedom of choice? Any attempt to answer this question puts collectivistic and individualistic cultural models at stake. Jean Guichard warned me that any intervention in career guidance and counselling should introduce an ethical dilemma in the issue of freedom of choice, inviting all to think about the ‘perception of the cost for humanity of our personal achievements’. In the context of the pandemic, not distancing yourself socially can lead to a greater number of deaths. In the context of work, not thinking about the consequences and impacts of my daily decisions on the lives of others and the world in general can harm people, work processes and contexts (e.g., the idea of the green job proposed by the ILO).

This example brings us to the autonomy issue, that is, who can be autonomous? People with enough social and economic capital, as Pierre Bourdieu would say. In Brazil, for example, where more than 50% of workers are in the informal sector or unemployed, the decision to not work is nor a simple decision, neither it is exclusively personal, due to the lack of autonomy of most people. Because of this, many people are exposing themselves to the risk of becoming infected and contaminating others for survival needs.

This portrays how the individualisation of life in contexts of social inequality, such as in Latin America, is a strategy that leaves people in a precarious situation and without safe living conditions. Thus, I believe that individualised strategies are ineffective in socioeconomically unequal contexts. There is a need for community, social and state support that challenges the dominant neoliberal model and does not encourage autocratic state actions. At the beginnings of career guidance and counselling, Frank Parsons argued in Our countries need and The philosophy of mutualism that there is no sense in guidance if it does not contribute to emancipation and psychosocial transformation. He advocated the principle of mutualism as a way out for the capitalism, arguing for the replacement of competition with cooperation and ambition for money with social consensus and humanity. He believed that society should be controlled by the people and managed by the public authorities, aiming at the well-being of all, which resumes the definition of public, that is, for all towards the common good.

The nature and purpose of work

Thirdly, career guidance and counselling interventions need to include a discussion of what working looks like. They should discuss what kind of role an individual will play in the world, what is the importance of work in their life, what is the purpose of work for them, what they hope to achieve with their work, what the potential impacts of their work will be on the various dimensions of society, and what would be the place assigned to them in the working world due to their socioeconomic and cultural position. In short, what place do they occupy in social power relations and what is their chance of transcending it. Silvio Bock has already drew attention on this need in the early 2000s in his socio-historical approach to career guidance (see my article in the IAEVG journal for further discussion of this). Hooley, Sultana and Thomsen reinforce this argument by proposing building critical consciousness and helping ‘people to understand (their) (political) situation, not just to react to it on a personal level’.

Alternative approaches in a Latin American context

And finally, I present two points that I would like to argue regarding Hooley, Sultana and Thomsen post, proposing alternative ways out for Latin American contexts. The first point concerns the need to expand online practices and this comes up against a question that we are experiencing in Brazil: Who has access (or quality internet access) to stay online, for example, during a 3-hour class? A relevant part of the Brazilian population does not have internet quality connection, mainly at their homes. This constrains online practices and clearly reveals the issue of digital exclusion.

The second point concerns to the expansion of the offer of career guidance and counselling public policies. This unveils another historical issue experienced in Brazil: we have never had any kind of career guidance and counselling public policies and this proposal does not seem to be on the horizon of the current Brazilian government. In contexts of restricted state support and high social inequality, alternatives to this problem should come from communitarian strategies and social organisations. An example is a career guidance practice developed by Sergio Rascován in Argentina with peripheral communities from Buenos Aires through a communitarian radio. In the face of digital deficiency, we can make use of the existing socio-communitarian resources, as has been happening in low-income communities in Brazil to combat the pandemic (e.g., by the use of sound cars circulating on the streets to provide information about the basic health care, the importance of social distancing, and how to develop strategies to have some income). How can I distance myself socially if I depend on my daily work on the streets in contact with others to survive? Communities, neighbourhood associations and social movements have been creating local alternative ways to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, sustain the local economy and guarantee minimum conditions of security and protection regardless of the state that is absent in these contexts. We should continue to struggle for both digital inclusion and public policy to create career guidance and counselling services. If we want to offer career guidance and counselling for all people in contexts like Brazil, however, we must consider that the new normal for the career guidance and counselling practices is neither online practices, nor provided through public policies. It should come from communitarian actions and the resources these communities can provide, since this is the possible alternative for the most people in Brazil. This does not mean that we should not take seriously and undertake an extensive research and experimentation agenda for online career guidance and counselling practice as this is being proved urgent in the face of the reality of the pandemic. Thus, in order to have the potential for emancipation, career guidance and counselling cannot be a practice restricted to individual or group-based strategies. It needs to directly include the clients home community, not as a mere source of consultation, but as a joint action partner in the process co-constructing the person’s working future (e.g., promoting discussion groups in community associations with the client, the career guidance/counselling practitioner, and local residents to discuss and find examples from her own close context).

Reconstructing the world and career guidance

In short, I believe that the multidimensional crisis generated by the coronavirus pandemic is an excellent opportunity to reconstruct the world, as well as the field of career guidance and counselling. Several authors in our field have been highlighting key points where the field needs to change. These ideas now find space to be seriously discussed, given the imposed task of thinking about the new normal. I quote a synthesis of potential projects for the field that I proposed in 2018, inspired by many authors.

• Deal with flexibilisation, individualisation and the precariousness of careers to respond to contemporary social and working demands in a socially just way.
• Contextualise theories and practices.
• Incorporate new epistemes in line with advances in the field of science.
• Expand and diversify the public who can access career guidance and ensure that it is available to everyone who needs it.
• Add the discussion of the intersectionality of race/ethnicity, gender/sexuality and social class to theories and practices.
• Include social transformation projects into their practices, as Frank Parsons at first proposed.

This is our current challenge: to take advantage of the social gap created by the pandemic and to try to recreate a normal which places people at the heart of any social and political action. As stated by Hooley, Sultana and Thomsen: ‘In such a situation, we need to be thinking about how we can make the new normal a more just, humane and sustainable world’, that can offer career guidance and counselling to everyone in a contextualised way and by a permanent dialogue with all involved.