In this post Jonna Linde, Joakim Lindgren and Åsa Sundelin discuss their work on career counselling with asylum seekers in Sweden.

Recent migration flows to high-income countries, particularly the migration wave in 2015/16, have included large numbers of young, unaccompanied refugees. This situation has created challenges, not only for the young asylum-seeking migrants, but also for policy-makers and professionals in educational institutions in Europe.

In a new article, we analyse what happens when career counselling is intertwined with the asylum process. Our example is from the Swedish context, but our ambition is to contribute to a broader discussion about professional ethical dilemmas for counsellors in contemporary Europe, related to social justice issues.

The context in Sweden

The background for our study is a controversial amendment to the Swedish education legislation regarding residence permits for upper secondary level students. Through this new law, education was co-opted as a sorting mechanism for migrants deciding who can stay and who is deported.

The interviewed counsellors in our study described the consequences for counselling as a “matter of life or death for the students”. They often worked in isolation with scarce information and poor institutional support knowing that their decisions were made without sufficient knowledge.

High-stakes counselling

Following the resulting changes in juridical, educational and interpersonal conditions, we argue that career counsellors must deliver what we call ‘high-stakes counselling’. This form of counselling involves what Kunreuther and colleagues call ‘high stakes decision making’ in potentially disastrous situations with high levels of uncertainty and complexity, but low levels of normative guidance.

In the article, we draw attention to tensions between policy ideals and actions. For example, tight matching to demands of the labour market is essential in this ‘high-stakes counselling’. Career counsellors have to cope and struggle with these tensions when institutional demands contradict their sense of what they should be doing. We conclude that a consequence is institutional introduction of conditional citizenship of asylum-seeking students. This allows countries to select migrants through education, which severely conflicts not only with counselling ideals, but also democratic and equality values regarding possibilities to make choices for the future.

Find the full article here (open access)