Vocational education is frequently framed in policy and research as a second-best or risky educational pathway, often associated with limited aspirations, constrained choice, or lower long-term returns. In both European and U.S.-based research, vocational participation has commonly been analyzed through lenses of stratification, labor market outcomes, and differential returns by gender, class, and program type (Jacob & Ricks, 2023; Ames, 2021). While such studies have provided important insights into inequalities in access and outcomes, they tend to privilege economic rationality and structural determinants over young people’s own interpretations of educational choice.

Nordic research has similarly documented how vocational education is embedded in broader patterns of social reproduction, gender segregation, and classed educational trajectories (Reegård, 2019; Zahl-Thanem & Blekesaune, 2025). At the same time, recent sociological work has questioned deficit-oriented narratives by showing how vocational students articulate meaningful aspirations, strong professional identities, and future orientations that do not align neatly with dominant academic success norms (Ljunggren & Orupabo, 2020). These studies point to the need for analytical approaches that take young people’s narratives seriously, rather than interpreting vocational choice primarily as a constrained or compensatory decision.

This paper seeks to contribute to this shift by focusing on vocational education as a space of future-making. Drawing on a comparative qualitative study of young people enrolled in vocational education and training (VET) in Norway and career and technical education (CTE) in Wisconsin, USA, the paper examines how narratives of hope, motivation, and agency are constructed within different institutional contexts. While U.S.-based CTE research has increasingly emphasized students’ preferences, perceived utility, and intrinsic value of vocational courses (Altermatt et al., 2025), such perspectives are rarely connected to broader sociological discussions of welfare regimes, institutional trust, and the social organization of opportunity.

To bridge this gap, the paper builds explicitly on the concept of opportunity structures as developed by Smeplass and Zirkle (2026). Rather than treating opportunity as a fixed set of external conditions or as individual preference, opportunity structures are understood as institutionally organized and socially experienced horizons that shape how young people imagine possible futures. From this perspective, educational choice is not simply a response to labor market signals or program availability (Jacob & Ricks, 2023), but a narrative process through which young people align present engagement with anticipated futures that feel realistic, meaningful, and attainable.

The overarching analytical concern of the paper is how young people in vocational education imagine their future, and how narratives of hope and motivation are shaped by institutional contexts and opportunity structures. More specifically, the paper examines how young people construct narratives around educational choice, practical learning, and early labor market attachment, and how these narratives express forms of agency grounded in institutional security, family experiences, and vocational cultures. By comparing Norway and Wisconsin, the analysis highlights how differing welfare arrangements and governance regimes shape perceptions of risk, reversibility, and future possibility—without reducing these differences to individual calculation or economic rationality alone.

The paper draws on a comparative qualitative interview study conducted in Norway and Wisconsin, USA, with data collected during 2025–2026. The dataset consists of in-depth interviews with 28 young people enrolled in VET in Norway and CTE in Wisconsin. Participants represent a broad range of vocational fields and are all in the early phase of their vocational education. The methodological approach is explicitly youth-centered, placing young people’s own experiences, interpretations, and future imaginaries at the core of the analysis. Data collection was carried out by researchers with extensive expertise in their respective national contexts. This contextual expertise played a crucial role not only in recruitment and interviewing, but also in the analytical process. Throughout the study, the research team worked collaboratively across contexts, sharing interview transcripts, analytical memos, and emerging interpretations. This iterative back-and-forth enabled the researchers to translate institutional arrangements, educational pathways, and labour market structures across contexts, and to assess how young people’s expressed hopes and expectations relate to the opportunity structures surrounding them. An identical semi-structured interview guide was used in both countries. The guide was designed to elicit open-ended and reflective responses, encouraging participants to articulate normative understandings of education, work, and a good life rather than providing instrumental or predefined answers. Interview topics included educational choice, experiences of vocational learning, identity and belonging, economic considerations, and future plans and aspirations. This design allowed young people to construct narratives that link past experiences, present engagement, and imagined futures. All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The analysis followed an abductive approach (Tavory & Timmermans, 2014), moving iteratively between empirical material, emerging analytical patterns, and theoretical concepts. Rather than testing predefined hypotheses, the analysis remained sensitive to surprising or taken-for-granted elements in young people’s accounts, allowing concepts such as hope, agency, and opportunity structures to be refined through engagement with the data. This approach aligns with qualitative traditions that emphasise close, experience-near interpretation as a basis for theoretical development (Smeplass, 2023). Analytically, the study combines thematic and narrative analysis. Interviews were first coded thematically to identify recurring patterns related to motivation, future orientation, and perceptions of risk and opportunity. Narrative analysis was then used to examine how young people constructed coherent stories about their educational trajectories and future possibilities. The comparative dimension is analytical rather than variable-based, focusing on similarities and differences in how futures are imagined within distinct institutional and welfare contexts.

Preliminary analyses reveal both similarities and differences among young people in the sample. Initially, the study expected clearer contrasts between Norway and Wisconsin, particularly given differences in welfare arrangements, educational governance, and economic security. Instead, the analyses point to a striking degree of similarity in how young people across both contexts narrate their futures. This convergence suggests that these orientations may reflect broader generational patterns in how young people relate to education, work, and the future. Across both contexts, young people tend to distance their educational choices from the uncertainties that dominate adult public discourse, such as geopolitical instability, economic volatility, or technological change. Rather than framing their futures in terms of risk or threat, participants articulate a pronounced future optimism and focus on the immediate and experiential value of vocational education. Vocational pathways are described as meaningful, motivating, and practically oriented, with strong emphasis on hands-on learning, skill development, and early connection to working life. At the same time, important contextual differences remain. Norwegian participants, in particular, express very limited concern about educational costs, debt, or long-term income prospects, reflecting the broader welfare context in which vocational education is embedded. In Wisconsin, economic considerations are more present in young people’s narratives, yet they do not dominate how vocational education is valued or chosen. In both contexts, young people emphasize work that allows them to create, contribute, and make a difference, and vocational education is experienced as a legitimate and respected pathway within their immediate social environments. Taken together, these findings challenge deficit-oriented and risk-focused accounts of vocational education. They invite further exploration of vocational education as a space of hope and future-making and suggest that vocational pathways may be attractive to contemporary youth precisely because they combine realism, flexibility, and meaning in an uncertain world.

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