Precipitated by the economic restructuring of the late twentieth century, the northern border state of Coahuila has become a nexus site for Mexico’s neoliberal transformation and integration into the global economy. Numerous trade agreements and the explosion of low-cost export processing, or maquiladora, industries have produced the conditions for Coahuila to become relatively prosperous, heavily dependent on global value chains, and enmeshed in an ideological reorientation towards market liberalism, individual advancement, and aspirational consumption (Laurell, 2015; Morton, 2003). 

It is against this backdrop that young people in Coahuila construct their personal and professional transitions. The Modelo Mexicano de Formación Dual/Mexican Model of Dual Training (MMFD) – launched in 2013 with the assistance of German bilateral cooperation actors – offers young people upper secondary apprenticeship training with local employers, intended to improve the workplace preparedness and employment outcomes of vocational school students. Global processes shaping Coahuila’s social and economic landscape are thus highly pertinent to young people’s transition trajectories and the intended policy outcomes of the MMFD. Nonetheless, research investigating the MMFD from the perspective of policy participants is only nascent, and scarcely extends to consideration of how their seemingly ‘local’ training and transition experiences are shaped by global political and economic change. Indeed, while political economy frameworks have been fruitfully and extensively used to understand national skill formation systems, understanding the impact of global political economic structures on young people’s micro-level experiences of dVET training has not been well examined, even as the policy has become notably globally mobile.  

This paper thus considers how the youth transitions of MMFD students are impacted by Coahuila’s relationship to globalization and the global political economy, considering: 

1. the impacts of interdependencies between local and global economic conditions on young people’s MMFD training and transition opportunities; 

2. the influence of Coahuila’s place in the global political economy on the industrial relations of training (Stuart, 2019) reflected in the MMFD; 

3. The role of globally-enmeshed change to Mexico’s political landscape in shaping young people’s life plans.  

Findings suggest that global political economy factors play an important role in the functioning and outcomes of the MMFD, despite their scant consideration in discussions of dVET policy transfer. In the specific context of Coahuila and the MMFD, findings invite reflection on the risks of immersing students in maquiladora working environments fundamentally shaped by their low-cost production role in the global political economy. Looking to work-based forms of learning such as apprenticeships in wider international context, this example from Coahuila suggests that the mechanisms underpinning the intended outcomes of such programmes – including quality training experiences, proximity to employers, workplace socialisation, and vocational identity formation – should not be presumed to function similarly across diverse contexts that interact differently with globalization dynamics. Plainly, the German production contexts which inspired this educational model occupy a vastly different position in the global political economy from those in which young Coahuilans train.  

As international organisations, including the European Union, increasingly join DACH co-operation agencies in their longstanding efforts to promote dVET policy mobility (Vanderhoven, 2023; Vanderhoven et al., 2024), it appears pertinent for European actors and audiences engaged with dVET policy development to consider how global dynamics that necessarily impact local economies and labour markets, industrial relations, and political transformation bleed into the training experiences of dVET policy participants. If not considered and accounted for, newly-adopted iterations of dVET policy within and beyond Europe are not likely to produce expected results, particularly as relates to the perpetuation of social inequalities among marginalised youth. 

The study followed the dVET transitions of 16 young people living in Coahuila, Mexico recruited through National College of Technical Professional Education (CONALEP) schools. The qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) project comprised three waves of semi-structured interviews (n=48) conducted between February 2020 and February 2022. Each interview point corresponded to a ‘critical juncture’ related to education and work, namely: approaching graduation; immediate post-graduation period; one year or more after graduation. The sample of MMFD students (n=16) aimed for gender balance (m=9, f=7) and sectoral diversity (industrial=11, services=5), although the overrepresentation of industrial specialisms reflected the service offer of the schools and the local economic/labour profile. The 48 interview transcripts were first analysed from a reflexive thematic analytical standpoint (Braun and Clarke, 2019; 2022); that is to say, the chosen analytical framework informed the organisation and interpretation of data into a series of themes, sub-themes, and codes. As such, the approach to coding was primarily latent – exploring concepts and assumptions behind the ‘on-the-page’ data – but nonetheless maintaining a semantic interest in participants’ reporting of their experiences and opinions (Braun and Clarke, 2022). A number of tentative codes based on the three strands of enquiry outlined above (i.e. economic interdependency, industrial relations of training, political transformation) were used as a starting point for coding. Coding was thus conducted in an iteratively inductive-deductive fashion (Braun and Clarke, 2022). Several contrasting test cases were the first to be coded, in order to rapidly expand code diversity and comprehensiveness. The process recursively moved through generating, refining, reviewing, renaming, and regrouping codes and themes over two rounds of reviewing the full dataset (Braun and Clarke, 2022). As part of thematic analysis, data were analysed cross-sectionally at each time point to compare participants’ divergent experiences and self-representations (including segregated by case property such as gender, sector etc.), longitudinally to trace each participant’s changing trajectory over time, and cross-sectionally and longitudinally to detect collective change over time (Lewis, 2007; Neale and Flowerdew, 2003). These three axes of contrast helped in the construction of latent, explanatory analysis related to the chosen framework.

Three primary findings are presented. Firstly, the interdependency of local and global economies leaves MMFD delivery and outcomes vulnerable to crisis conditions. Exemplified by participants’ experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic, host firms’ susceptibility to disruptions in global value chains undermine a continuous learning experience and the anticipated pathway to intermediate-level employment. Indeed, participants experienced severely truncated training and fractured employment transitions, likely producing lifelong scarring effects (ILO, 2022). Secondly, the deliberate suppression of union organising and working conditions underlying maquiladora industries’ global competitiveness (Cooney, 2001; Moreno-Brid et al., 2021) produces spillover effects for equity and quality in the MMFD. Given a setting where many firms prioritise extractive profit maximisation, students appear particularly vulnerable to impoverished learning experiences and inculcation with exploitative work norms during their work-based training. This produces sectoral inequities between service and industrial specialisms, the latter being more enmeshed in exploitative/discriminatory production practices. Equity implications also relate to women’s positioning as a docile workforce for maquiladora industries (Taylor, 2010). Female study participants’ efforts to transgress accepted ‘low-skill’ assembly line roles were met with hiring discrimination, unequal training opportunities, and sexual harassment. Finally, the predominantly lower-class youth targeted by MMFD training exhibit unruly aspirations that run counter to policymakers’ desire for immediate labour market insertion. Ubiquitous discourses of meritocracy combined with intergenerational poverty predispose trainees to aspire as high as they can (Aldinucci et al., 2021) and, thus, enter higher education. Assuming that young people will form aspirations rationally underestimates the role of neoliberal norms in propelling young people’s aspirations upwards, even as the associated economic structures widen inequality and stymy their realisation. Indeed, aspirations will not be easily moulded by new educational pathways and careers information while the disconnect between discourses of individual advancement and the reality of deep inequality remains unchallenged.

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