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Although it is illegal for refugees to work without work permits in Jordan, in practice many are involved in unskilled, low-paid jobs that Jordanian citizens do not want to do. Due to their irregular status, many Syrian refugees are forced into taking jobs in the informal economy, where insurance provision is unlikely, and where workers' rights – such as compensation for work-related injuries – may be ignored. This chapter argues that by benefiting from appropriate employment services – including career information and guidance, recognition of prior learning, and livelihood planning – Syrian refugees living in Jordan are more likely to have access to regular employment, to social protection and to decent work. This chapter also proposes a number of innovations in the organisation and delivery of a linked set of guidance services, provided through a Livelihood Centre which functions as a one-stop shop. It shows how such initiatives, if properly implanted, can improve the prospects of Syrian refugees, while ensuring that the outcomes benefit the Jordanian host community as well. Guidance can thus serve as an advocacy tool, impacting both at the grassroots level and at the level of policy development.

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This chapter introduces the goals and aspirations for this volume, showing how the different chapters build on earlier studies of career guidance in the region in an effort to develop theoretically informed accounts of the field as it is conceived and practised in context. The value of using the Mediterranean as a lens through which to consider career guidance is discussed, suggesting that by so doing, new insights can be generated that promote a deeper understanding of what career guidance might involve, and the forms and shapes it can assume. Such intellectual labour, it is argued, is necessary if we are to develop Southern perspectives, which can serve to trouble mainstream understandings of what career guidance entails, particularly if context-sensitive accounts of the public and private benefits of guidance are to be articulated.

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This chapter highlights the ways in which career guidance, understood as a process that provides information, advice and guidance to students and adults with a view to better balance the supply and demand of skills, cannot flourish in Algeria given the phenomenon of academic drift. Despite clear evidence that a vocational education and training pathways is more likely to lead to employment, Algerian students continue flocking to universities, which have become mass institutions feeding widespread unemployment nation-wide. In the meantime, student orientation services remain quite powerless, given that it is mainly the logic of the grade, and the French tradition of conseil de classe, that determines the educational pathways to be followed by students, where choices are made by default, irrespective of ability, inclination, and desire. The spectre of an army of unemployed youth, frustrated and disoriented, poses severe problems that career guidance cannot be expected to resolve on its own. While some initiatives have been launched to support career planning and development for both students and adults, the jury is still out as to their impact and longevity.

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Saudi Arabia has recently embarked on an ambitious experiment with career guidance. The country has identified that career guidance offers a range of potential cultural, educational and economic benefits. These include supporting the Saudisation of the workforce, the development of the vocational education system and the engagement of the Saudi 'youth bulge' in the labour market and wider society. However, the country has a weak tradition of career guidance and a need to develop new policies and systems rapidly. The Saudi Ministry of Labour has driven the development of the country's new career guidance system and has sought to learn from global best practice. However, Saudi Arabia offers a very different context from those where career guidance has flourished. Particularly distinctive features of Saudi society include its limited civil society, the central role that religion plays, the place of women, the role of oil within the economy and the high level of migrant workers in the labour market. Taken together these issues offer challenges of culture, theory, policy and practice. Negotiating these challenges and building an organic body of theory and practice will be critical to the success or otherwise of the Saudi experiment with career guidance.

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This chapter notes that career guidance in Libya has not yet developed as a separate and distinct service. Counselling is often associated with the management of young people's behaviour, and throughout the different periods of educational development and reform in the country, the orientation and preparation of students for the world of work has mainly been carried out through the selection and distribution of individuals based on their examination results. Even when career guidance started being recognised as one of the services that should be made available to students, the field's main attraction lie in its potential in orienting students towards the vocational training sector. Career advice is provided informally within the extended family, with some university faculties also attempting to organise career information services, though here too the approach remains directive, in relation to perceived 'needs' of the economy. Externally funded projects have been instrumental in introducing contemporary approaches to career guidance, though whether these initiatives take root and go to scale still needs to be seen.

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Another chapter in this volume also focuses on Libya and is available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 131.127. Show less

This chapter presents and discusses the career plans of Israeli Arab and Jewish young adults. It also considers in some detail recent Israeli studies on the process of career exploration in the period of emerging adulthood. These studies illustrate how culture as well as socio-political conditions shapes this process and impact on plans for the future. The chapter concludes by making a series of reflections and suggestions regarding career interventions that use a broad definition of career. It is argued that there is a need to focus career intervention on work, family and the interface between the two, highlighting the importance of family involvement, especially with young adults from more traditional and collectivistic cultures.

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This chapter considers the origins, development, and current state of career education and guidance services in Malta, as well as prospects for the field's future. Career guidance and counselling trace their roots to the late 1960s, when an Educational Guidance Unit was set up within the government's Department of Education. Various economic and cultural factors have shaped the orientation of the service in the education sector which, up to 2007, included both personal and career guidance. These two aspects were formally separated following proposals made in the Career Guidance Policy for Schools, a policy framework only aspects of which have been implemented. The chapter notes that while the need to develop an integrated system of lifelong career guidance has been highlighted in various documents, the field remains characterised by a multitude of insufficiently coordinated efforts by different players, yielding outcomes of varying quality and value. Furthermore, while career education and guidance provision has made good progress in the education sector, services for adults remain limited in extent and scope. The need to strengthen career services, by further professionalising career practitioners and improving the availability of relevant resources, is increasingly being felt.

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This chapter provides an in-depth view of the situation of Palestine under occupation, highlighting the restrictions occupation imposes on young people's aspirations for decent work. It draws on a number of survey results in order to explore various facets of young people's study- and work-related aspirations, choices and decisions during different phases of the process of transition to adulthood, while reflecting on the potential of information, advice and guidance in supporting students living under adverse conditions. Endogenous aspects of Palestinian culture that shape and have an impact on the journey to independent living are also discussed. It is argued that while the challenges that Palestinian youths have to face can only be comprehensively addressed through political and economic emancipation, career education and guidance have nevertheless a role to play in supporting their quest for dignified living and a decent livelihood.

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This chapter sets out to provide an overview of the career guidance and counselling field in Cyprus. It first of all describes service providers in the education sector. Here, school counsellors have to face a number of challenges given the multiple roles they are required to fulfil. They are not only concerned with work that is normally associated with guidance and counselling, such as seeing students individually and in groups and administering and interpreting tests, but are also tasked with dealing with a range of duties that are more managerial in nature. Despite becoming increasingly qualified, skilled and professional, Cypriot school counsellors find themselves in a constant battle with time, in an effort to give students a better service. Such efforts are strongly supported by the Career Education Services of the Ministry of Education and Culture, where, in the context of a small state, it makes sense to have a central unit that promotes the professionalisation of the field through training programmes and resource development. The chapter also details other guidance service providers in Cyprus, including those for youth and adult job seekers in both the public and private sector. The Youth Board, the Ministry of Labour, Welfare and Social Insurance, and District Career Counselling Centres are also making a significant contribution in implementing a national strategic plan for the field, elaborated in response to the recommendations of an external evaluation team.

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France has been a host country to immigrants from the Maghreb (Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco) for more than a century. This chapter focuses on the children of these migrants, most of whom were born in France and have French citizenship. And yet, as first or second generation citizens with a Maghrebi background, they nevertheless manifest particular patterns when it comes to school achievement and subsequent inclusion in the labour market, areas in which educational and occupational guidance play a mediating role. The chapter shows that this particular group experiences cultural and linguistic difficulties at school, as well as discrimination, resulting in socially inequitable outcomes. Educational and guidance policies and practices aimed at addressing and reducing such inequalities are described, noting, however, that such efforts have a paradoxical effect: by identifying this group as targets for specific and compensatory support, policies end up reinforcing stigmatisation processes. Students with a Maghrebi background are confronted with all sorts of difficulties throughout their years in education and training, starting from the first years of schooling onwards. Most end up unfavourably positioned when it comes to making a transition to the labour market, particularly given limited opportunities in a competitive environment. The ways guidance, as part of a broader range of strategic interventions, can be mobilised to address such a situation, are examined.

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