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Journal of Counseling Psychology 2004, Vol. 51, No. 3, 275–286

Copyright 2004 by the American Psychological Association 0022-0167/04/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0022-0167.51.3.275

Conceptions of Work: The View From Urban Youth
Anna P. Chaves, Matthew A. Diemer, David L. Blustein, Laura A. Gallagher, Julia E. DeVoy, Maria T. Casares, and Justin C. Perry
Boston College
This study sought to examinehow poor and working-class urban adolescents conceive of work as well as the work-related messages they receive from their families. Data were collected to understand how 9th-grade urban students perceive work using an exploratory and qualitative research methodology. Although the data suggested that urban youths’ conceptions of work were complex and varied, the conceptual array of urban youths’perceptions of work suggested that work does not generally represent a means of self-concept expression or the expression of one’s interest in the world of work. Specifically, urban youth tended to define work in terms of external outcomes (e.g., money), which was also a common theme among the messages they received about work from their families.

Many urban youth in the United States are at aconsiderable risk for experiencing unsuccessful school-to-work transitions (Blustein, Juntunen, & Worthington, 2000; Wilson, 1996), which increase their chances of engaging in unsatisfying and low-income work (Glover & Marshall, 1993), and facing chronic joblessness and underemployment (Hotchkiss & Borow, 1996). (In this study, the term urban youth is used to denote young people who live in urbanareas whose families, some of whom are recent immigrants, are financially impoverished or struggling to make ends meet. Naturally, we are aware that not all urban youth are poor or working class.) Significant external challenges hinder the vocational development of urban youth, including racism and discrimination, poverty, and access to fewer resources such as adequate job training and qualityschooling (Constantine, Erikson, Banks, & Timberlake, 1998; Newman, 1996; Wilson, 1996). In short, urban youth, particularly racial– ethnic minority youth, often experience considerable difficulty in obtaining access to employment that is stable and meaningful (Carter & Cook, 1992; Wilson, 1996). In an attempt to address many of these inequities and provide a more equitable playing field, recentschool-to-work interventions have been developed as a means to promote optimal transitions for urban youth (Blustein et al., 2000). Similarly, educational reform efforts, many of which are based on school-to-work initiatives and other vocationally oriented themes, have sought to improve access to occupational opportunities for adolescents by providing them with the necessary skills to becomesuccessful participants in the world of work (Stone & Mortimer, 1998). For the most part,

Anna P. Chaves, Matthew A. Diemer, David L. Blustein, Laura A. Gallagher, Julia E. DeVoy, Maria T. Casares, and Justin C. Perry, Lynch School of Education, Boston College. This research was supported in part by Boston Public Schools, the Boston College Lynch School of Education Collaborative Fellows program,Massachusetts Department of Education, and the American Honda Foundation grants awarded to David L. Blustein. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to David L. Blustein, Department of Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology, Boston College, Campion Hall 315, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467. E-mail: blusteid@bc.edu 275

existing school-to-work initiatives have been designedwithout an explicit awareness of how the recipients of these efforts conceive of the relationships between themselves and their vocational worlds. Without a clear sense of how urban youth understand the experience of work, present educational and psychological interventions may not be sufficiently relevant to the inner lives of the urban students. This study was designed, therefore, to begin...