Tag: soft skills

Young people working together in a community setting, illustrating skills, belonging and social capital.

Where Do Young People Belong Anymore? Skills for Life, Capital and the Social Spaces of Growing Up

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We expect young people to reach adulthood with confidence, communication skills, resilience and leadership, but rarely ask where they were supposed to develop them. Drawing on Bourdieu, research on youth participation and the idea of opportunity structures, this article explores how skills, relationships and social capital are built, recognised and unequally distributed.

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Young care worker supports an elderly resident, separated by a text-like barrier from an interview panel facing an empty chair.

The Hidden Curriculum of Soft Skills: Recognition, Capital, and Who Gets Left Out

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Job adverts demand communication, leadership, and resilience. But who actually gets credit for them? Drawing on Bourdieu, Puwar, and Rivera, this article argues that soft skills are not recognised neutrally — they are filtered through class, race, and cultural capital. The result is a hiring system that mistakes social advantage for individual merit.

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