Relying on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper discusses how standard educational distinctions between theoretical and practical knowledge, manual and intellectual work, and technology and people, reinforces the current challenges by those training apprentices in the machine, electrical engineering, and metal industry (MEM) in Switzerland.

Since the 1980s many advanced economies have witnessed a major reorientation in the pattern, form and sources of capitalist economic growth, involving, on the hand a decline in contribution of industrial manufacturing to their gross domestic product (GDP), employment, and trade, and rapid growth of employment, and economic output in the service sector, on the other. These fundamental transformations in the economic structure have been described in terms such as post-Fordism, knowledge economy or information society. The assumption that knowledge work will take the place of traditional industry labor, was finally the key to the sociotechnical imaginary of a de-industrialized society (Haskel & Westlake 2018; Jasanoff & Kim 2015; Moldaschl & Stehr 2010).

A major focus of sociological and anthropological work and education studies was the declining employment opportunities for young working class men in the «new» «knowledge economy» labor markets, where manufacturing declined rapidly over the last four decades and was offshored to lower cost locations (Bourgois 2002; McDowell 2020). Young people with low levels of education and social and cultural capital no longer experience, in many post-industrial countries, a linear transition from school to employment and face increasingly precarious forms of work and self-employment (Sinnons & Smyth 2018). We know, however, little about the relationship of youth, education and industry work in advanced economies, where production remained «at home» (Streckeisen 2008).

This paper presents an ethnographic case study from Switzerland, whose MEM industry sector has also undergone major restructuring since the 1990s (e.g offshoring, automatization, tertiarization), but many internationalized firms still run production facilities in the country and the need for manual labor has not disappeared. It is in labor intensive professions that firms increasingly struggle to recruit apprentices. They least fit, as we argue, with a sociotechnical imaginary of an information society in which labor becomes immaterial and is freed from all forms of material constraints, whether they are technical, economic or societal. This paper explores the attempts of industry actors to make their vocational education more attractive to young people and contrasts these strategies with the lived working experiences of apprentices in the sector.

The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork between May 2022 and January 2023, in three firms within the Swiss MEM industry. Apprentices, their trainers and coaches were shadowed in different work related contexts (meetings, training workshops; special firm events) over this period of time. Informal conversations and/or semi-structured interviews were conducted with thirty apprentices, ten trainers and coaches and three heads of vocational education and their deputies. Semi-structured interviews were recorded and transcribed. Field visits were documented in fieldnotes and analytical notes. Industry actors were also observed at industry wide events such as national skill competitions or meetings of industry association. The aim of this ethnographic fieldwork was to understand what in practice, constitutes the learning culture in apprenticeships within this specific industry sector. The ethnographic material was coded and categorized with grounded theory methods (Clarke 2005; Breidenstein et al 2013).

The reader is presented with a historical overview of the transformation of work and vocational education in the Swiss MEM industry. Thereafter we discuss examples which show the role and meaning of «hands» and «craftsmanship» in apprentices› career choices. We argue that youth, in contrast to the complaints of MEM industry actors, do not object «to getting their hands dirty», but are discouraged to pursue a career in this field by the intense working conditions and the low economic status and lack of prestige these professions enjoy. This analysis is then followed by a second set of examples which demonstrates that an increasing number of apprentices come into these professions, not by personal choice, but because they struggle for intersectional reasons to find apprenticeships in more desired professions that these young people associate mostly with «office» and «IT work». These apprentices often do not fit the narrow conception of the «ideal apprentice» in this industry sector: someone who possesses craft skills, but also a competitive, socially mobile and entrepreneurial self. Failure to perform or low motivation tend to get construed by vocational education trainers as a private psychological propensity or attitude, herby attributing social disadvantage for instance to a lack of self-responsibility. We conclude that firms, which establish a learning culture that questions the standard educational distinctions between theoretical and practical knowledge, manual and intellectual work and between technology and the social might be most successful today in creating an attractive work environment for apprentices. Since operating outside of these historical distinctions goes some way to engender appreciation and therefore value the cognitive demands of physical work, and contribute to an education system where «working with hands» is not perceived as a fallback position.

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