Career development and active participation of individuals in contexts of instability and change

Career issues are a major part of the enormous challenges of how to live in a market economy. Designing one?s career and life involves understanding the complex relationships between the individual?s agency and intentionality, and the social structure of risks and opportunities that characterise labour markets. The active participation of individuals in these structures suggests the development of models that address this difficult relationship, and explore the tensions, difficulties, and conflicts between personal and social demands. In this chapter, we present a theoretical and empirical approach to observe subjective ways of constructing identity as a development process based on five dimensions: 1. security or development orientation, 2. sense of ?where to go?, 3. commitment to development, 4. reflective awareness and 5. self-confidence. These dimensions could dance or stumble in an environment characterised by change and a constant demand for re-adaptation.