Making an entrepreneur: rhythmanalysis of English-medium vocational education in Sweden

Abstract This paper investigates how the entrepreneurial self is visually and discursively constructed within an English-Medium Vocational Education and Training (EMVET) program in Sweden, and the relationship between Swedish and English within this construction. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at one EMVET program, the study analyzes its classroom interactions, institutional discourse, and the spatiotemporal configuration. The analysis is informed by Lefebvre’s spatial triad and rhythmanalysis. The findings show that the school operates as a neoliberal infrastructure, rebranding industrial heritage to cultivate cognitive labor, while imposing rhythms of entrepreneurial self. Although the school promotes autonomy and innovation, it simultaneously disciplines students through aestheticized spaces and accelerated timelines. Instances of resistance, such as ethical self-branding or rejection of generative AI, signal tensions within this system. I argue that EMVET’s promise of empowerment masks structural precarity, revealing a dissonance between the marketed rhythms of education and students’ lived experiences of learning under neoliberalism, exposing the contradictions at the core of the entrepreneurial self that the students are expected to embody.