Paper short abstract

This paper draws on ethnographic research carried out in New York City and London to explore how young people make sense of 'work' as an organising concept for understanding the future.

Paper long abstract

This paper draws on ethnographic research carried out in New York City and London to explore how young people make sense of 'work' as an organising concept for understanding the future. I argue that young people maintain multiple and often conflicting narratives of the future, in which imaginings of employment and vocation are negotiated in relation to broader ideas of success, failure, and positions in-between. I draw on the concept of futures literacy (Miller 2013) to explore how young people work and re-work the future in order to fit the conditions of their emerging present at the end of secondary education.