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This paper examines aspects of the school-to-work transition process for high-achieving Indigenous Fijian young women using selective data from a wider study of school-to-work transitions conducted in 2005. It appears that traditional and colonial understandings of the role of Fijian women still shape even high-achieving girls’ career and life options; these are expressed through their subject choices at school and their narrow career aspirations. While the social reproduction mechanisms of schools are evident, families and communities are also implicated. High-achieving girls still tend to emulate the career choices of older women in their families and communities, even in the current context of a marked lessening of labour market opportunities for the time-honoured ‘white-collar’ occupations of teaching, nursing and public service work. Some provisional interpretations, looking towards productive interventions at school, community and church level, of this phenomenon are offered.

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This article studies the motivations and the formal and informal learning contexts for well-educated, young Balinese from poorer areas who enroll in cruise ship training colleges. The major motivations were obtaining a high income and helping the family. While basic hospitality and tourism skills are acquired, trainees also named other capacities such as politeness, confidence and tricks, such as juggling, as advantageous. The work on board was acknowledged to be arduous and demanding. Physical and mental preparation was needed. On retirement from a cruise ship career, savings enable them to start a small business in Bali. However, many such small enterprises fail. We identify the need for further short course training and other support in post-cruise ship work business planning and management.

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Selected survey data on future aspirations and expectations from 3565 young Indonesians are presented in this study. Muslim-majority Indonesia is an Asian economic success story. The economy has seen solid growth, leading to an expansion of the private sector. The upward credentialling of the labour market and the rapid growth of the middle class have resulted. Accordingly, the transition to adulthood for working-class and lower middle-class youth has been extended by the necessity to complete schooling and tertiary training before work can be obtained and marriage can occur. Marriage and children still signify adulthood for both sexes. Career preference favoured the professions, especially for girls, despite tight competition for university places. While indicating upwardly mobile aspirations to middle-class life, respondents also demonstrated strong commitment to religious faith and normative family formation in the future. High expectations were tempered by realism though. When asked about obstacles to life dreams, most named material challenges such as family finances. Respondents from more privileged backgrounds were more likely to think non-material factors such as their own laziness would constitute an obstacle, while those lower on the socio-economic scale often indicated they did not have much chance of realising their life dreams due to material and structural constraints.

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