Newspaper Articles 1985-2015

Considering the inherently dynamic nature of labour market, change has always been an inseparable aspect of career studies. This qualitative study aims to look at the representation of this change in selected British newspapers to determine the extent to which the public discourse narratives conform with the traditional and modern dichotomy described in the career literature and how motifs of transformation and alteration are used to narrate the career stories. In particular, I will present a qualitative content analysis of the British newspaper articles published in the Times, the Guardian and the Daily Mail between 1985 to 2005 which particularly address the change in the structure of careers with the aim of identifying how popular opinions and academic discourse overlap, diverge and feed into one another. In this study, I will try to answer the question of how the language and discourse used by the journalists adds to or influence the presumptions about traditional and modern careers and how public discourse represent the transformation in structure of careers. In a wider sense, looking at the representation of change in structure of careers can also help us to see the role of print media in reproducing or challenging the notions of dominance in labour market and society as result of the neo-liberal political, economic and business reforms of the 1980s and 1990s.