In this post Sanna Toiviainen discusses the concept of ‘co-agency’ and why it might be useful for careers professionals. The post is partly based on an article recently published in a special issue of British Journal of Guidance and Counselling that focuses on critical perspectives on agency and social justice in transitions and career development.

Understanding the forces that shape people´s careers throughout their life course stands at the centre of the field of career guidance. These questions connect to a broader sociological inquiry regarding the relationship between agency and structure.

What is agency?

Agency can be broadly understood as inter-action among agents (human or non-human) that co-produce effects in the world. Agency is also often conceptualised with a narrower focus on individual agents and their intentional, goal-directed and deliberative actions and a sense of agency, their perceived possibilities to take action in given situations.

While the vast literature on agency understands it in a range of ways, emphasising either human actions or external structures, there is a consensus regarding the intertwined nature of these. It is thought, that individual behaviors and actions are circumscribed by structural constraints and structural forces constitute individual agents.

Taking action

Social structures contribute to both the actual and perceived resources of individuals to take action in their lives. From the perspective of critical social justice, people are positioned in societal structures of power and privilege and therefore have unequal possibilities to exercise agency.

Broadening the spaces of agency for various groups entails a critical contestation of the deeply-embedded societal structures, systems and discourses that contribute to oppression and marginalisation of some experiences and identities and lead to unequal possibilities for people to effect changes in their everyday lives and careers.

Agency in career theory

In career development theories agency is often associated with individualistic qualities such as autonomy, independence, self-determination, goal-directedness and perseverance. Albert Bandura views human agency as connected to self-efficacy, which can be thought as internalized beliefs about one’s ability to effect changes and exercise power through one’s actions.

According to the life-designing paradigm, individuals are able to exercise personal agency over externally imposed insecurity and structural constraints by embracing flexibility, adaptability and creative imagination. At the centre of these propositions is an idea of a socially boundless, ´rational´ and ´free´ agent, who can push against the existing social and societal forces, social orders and power structures. Adopting this notion of individualistic agency in career guidance practice is problematic as it disregards the social forces that constitute our self-images and positions in social orders as well as material possibilities for action.

A relational understanding of agency

A relational understanding of agency can offer a way to avoid the pitfalls of voluntarism and get a better grasp on the interplay of the various external factors and powers that contribute to a person´s agency construction. Understanding the client’s personal agency as relational offers a way to analyse and address the contextual factors that affect clients lives and career planning – and to see career guidance and counsellors as part of this framework.

Feminist scholars (e.g. McNay) in particular have questioned the masculinist idea of an autonomous and «rational» agent, and replaced this image with agency that is bounded, constrained and deeply embedded in intersubjective relations and broader historical and societal power relations. It is therefore necessary to be sensitive towards both the context-specific and broader power relations and social conditions that enable or constrain actions and decisions.

Re-imaging agency

The findings of my ethnographic PhD study that focused on career guidance for youth at the margins of education and work inspired me to explore further whether a relational undestanding of agency could act as a base for more critical and emancipatory career guidance practices. I will present some of these ideas through a notion of co-agency. Co-agency, through the prefix “co-“ highlights how agency is not in the possession of a singular agent, but needs a counterpart – that it is essentially a relational phenomenon.

Agency is something that cannot be obtained or possessed but comes into being through interactions, relations, networks and alliances. The “co-“ in co-agency refers to interaction with other people but also with structures, institutions, systems, cultures, histories, discourses and power relations that foster or hinder agency.

I will now discuss how co-agency can inform career guidance practice by focusing on three contexts: the counsellor–client context, the community context and the broader societal context. The framework is presented in Table 1.

Co-agency as a counsellor–client dyad	* Career guidance produces meanings and effects where both counsellors and clients mobilise their social, cultural and institutional resources * Power is dispersed according to the counsellor’s and client’s intersectional and institutional positions * Counsellee and counsellor co-construct meanings of the counsellee’s past, present and future and draw from societal discources available * Counsellor can use their power and resources to advocate with and on behalf of the client
Co-agency as a community construction	* Giving authorship of the ‘what, when, who and how’ of guidance to the group or community (see Thomsen) * Reframing individual issues as shared, collective issues * Individual experiences broaden the viewpoints of the whole group or community * Collective social validation and confirmation of different perspectives * Solidarity and forming local alliances
Co-agency as engaging with systems, culture and discourse	* Challenging public discourse by lifting up the voices of less heard groups * Critical understanding of individual experiences (clients/counsellors) in the context of institutional, cultural and societal power structures * Finding ways to address concerns on systemic and political level

Co-agency as a counsellor–client dyad

Firstly, it is important to consider how co-agency emerges out from the counsellor–client encounters. Supporting agency is at the core of career guidance which contributes to processes of learning and exploring, and to widening the perspectives and what Hodkinson & Sparkes call the ´horizons of action´ of individuals and groups.

In these processes both counsellor and client draw from their life-historical, social and cultural resources and differing intersectional positions of power and privilege. Neither can fully grasp each other´s situation because both are outsiders to each other´s unique situational contexts.

Exploration of meanings and widening perspectives in career guidance is therefore a joint effort by two incomplete, socially and culturally bound agents who are dependent on each other´s situated knowledges. Moreover, the joint co-construction is not occurring in a social vacuum but in a socially constructed world and the multiple, overlapping and competing discourses that are available in it to both the client and counsellor.

It is important to remain conscious of the dominant social discourses, versions of social reality that serve the status quo, and their oppressive and silencing effects on individual narrative and experience. Career counsellors are not only positioned differently through their life-historically formed habitus, but they also bring their institutional resources and power structures and theoretical-methodological frameworks to these encounters of joint learning and exploration. Through their institutional position counsellors are often better equipped to navigate the complex bureaucracy of the public welfare system and different educational and employment support measures. This makes them important allies for clients in more oppressed and marginal positions, who might be eligible to various support measures but who need help and advocacy to have access to these.

Co-agency in community

Secondly, co-agency considers how community or collective contributes to the construction of agency of its singular members. Career guidance can provide a place for a group or community to come together to share valuable, localised and unique experiences and insights. Sharing personal career-related concerns with others and hearing other people´s stories contribute to broadened perspectives, lifts up shared concerns and build solidarity. Especially for members of marginalised and oppressed groups, sharing diverse experiences can contribute to challenge dominant discourses and reconsider how ´normal´ can silence and suppress entire collectives and their experiences.

Recognising collective discomfort can also help to identify career barriers that are more systemic and structural rather than individual. Moreover, as groups and communities are different, should also the practices, methods, contents and the overall culture of career guidance be open to adaptations. Group or a collective can be given the power to lead guidance processes. Counsellors can take a more observer role and take notice, which topics are relevant for the participants, what situations and places seems to be appropriate for career guidance-related discussions and encourage the community members to regard themselves as co-counsellors.

Co-agency in engaging with systems

The third dimension of «co-« in co-agency is the acknowledgement that broadening people´s perceptions of what they are, what they are capable of and what is possible for them demands engagement with systems, cultures and discourses. Career counsellors can contribute to systemic changes as they stand witness to the everyday life concerns, troubles and worries of their clients that can point to broader systemic barriers and issues that need to be addressed on a political level.

Addressing systemic level issues entails that career guidance activities and practices are grounded in a critical societal orientation. This means both critical thinking and transformative action that enables to put the situational and localised experiences of individuals to a broader context of societal structures and the matrix of power relations that inform these experiences. It is turning the analytical gaze away from the individual experience and asking, what kind of structures, histories and dynamics of injustice enable these individual experiences to emerge.

Career guidance can offer arenas for critical exploration of existing social hierarchies and make room for alternative interpretations that challenge these hierarchies. This includes broadening the notion of ´career´ to better recognize people´s communal and societal contributions through care work, community and voluntary work and activism. Simultaneously it is important to lift up various structural issues such as the social, cultural or economic barriers in accessing jobs or different educational opportunities, segregation in educational tracks and in the labour market, or effects of urban segregation to educational outcomes. Social change is about people coming together and working consistently in order transform the existing cultural and social orders. By no means these change processes are quick or easy. Nevertheless, every encounter in career guidance facilities holds the potential of being a socially transformative space.

You can read Sanna’s article in full (including more detailed references) on the British Journal of Guidance and Counselling website. It is part of the special issue on Critical perspectives in Career Guidance Research.