The paper aims at elaborating the role of organizations as agents for inclusion and exclusion providing services for the development and the realisation of individual career projects. The professional integration is considered a stepping stone to social inclusion. However, in a fast developing knowledge economy individuals have to cope more frequently with changing demands and uncertainty of transitory situations in the context of de-standardised life courses. Career guidances service are given a special role in the EU policy programs in processing individual transitions to work (Schröder & Karl 2017). In this paper I will aim at elaborating the question how these organizations serve as agents of inclusion and exclusion.

The empirical basis of the data is taken from the collaborative project transition processing – pedagogical rationalities of person-related services for guidance and counselling in the field of labour transition. Within the context of this project, data has been collected and analysed in five cases of person-related services – transfer companies, vocational training and orientation, early school leaver’s counselling and coaching of organisational leaders – that provide guidance and counselling at the transition (back) to the labour market. Thereby, the methods of participant observation, conversational analysis, biographical analysis and expert interviews have been conducted to analysis each case. A structural analysis of the main patterns found in the data across cases will elaborate the role played by career guidance services in showing individuals (temporally) excluded from the labour market how to play one’s card well to (re-)gain access to labour market and as a result being socially included (again).

As a result of the analysis, a type of an advised subject is being co-constructed by these organisations that can be described as an agentic individual capable of skilfully using its diversity in approaching, dealing and communicating with different organisations to deal with uncertainties at the transitions (back) to work or education.

Schröder, Christian; Karl, Ute (2017): On being guided – a typology of career guidance in EU discourses. In: British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, S. 1–10. DOI: 10.1080/03069885.2017.1285005.