It seems that the design of vocational training for ‚disadvantaged‘ groups requires a special approach (Beck, 2018; Carvajal Muñoz, 2022; De Greef et al, 2012). This study investigates how workplace learning is shaped, experienced, and organizationally enabled within an Austrian Social-Economic Enterprise (SEE) operating in the secondary labor market, focusing on employees with histories of long-term unemployment and predominantly low formal qualifications. It examines three project areas characterized by distinct gendered and task configurations—wood construction (male-coded), local supply (diverse), and facility cleaning (female-coded)—and integrates the learning-biographical perspectives of employees with an organizational ethnography of artifacts and interaction practices. In doing so, the study tries to combine individual learning trajectories with organizational enabling (or constraining) conditions and accompanying modes of subjectification.

The research is guided by two interrelated questions: first, how employees in the SEE constitute their learning paths and coping practices in the context of reintegration and qualification processes meaning how are agency, recognition and belonging produced in and through (performative) routines, affective bonds and material arrangements; second, which organizational conditions—including instructional practices, feedback routines, team culture, work organization orartifacts—facilitate or workplace learning.

The theoretical framework draws on workplace learning theories (Usher and Edwards, 2007) as well as the Judtih Butler’s concept of Vulnerability (1997, 2004). Vulnerability is understood not as a deficit, but as relational exposure to normative orders, material infrastructures, and affective economies—as an ambivalent condition of fragility and responsiveness that opens up learning opportunities while also limiting them. The study thus links individual learning trajectories with organisational conditions of possibility—enabling as well as limiting—in work-centred transition and qualification settings, understood as fluid arrangements of practices, things, spaces and norms.

A narrative interview approach (Schütze, 2016) provides the basis for reconstructing life and career trajectories, including learning and coping experiences, transitions, and key events. Organizationally, the study mobilizes ethnographic perspectives following Ybema et al (2009), with attention to artifacts (e.g., work instructions, checklists, logbooks), team practices, and modalities of instruction and feedback in situ. Methodologically, analysis is grounded in reconstructive approaches; this is complemented by thematic coding to identify organization-relevant patterns and mechanisms.

The objectives are to develop an understanding that links biographical learning logics with organizational enabling structures; and to derive design recommendations for work organization, instructional and training practices, and artifact design (e.g., checklists, logbooks). Taken together, the study advances a multidimensional perspective on workplace learning in an SEE while considering employees’ biographical starting points and the organization’s real resources, routines, and constraints.

The design is qualitative-interpretive. The plan includes approximately ten interviews with employees, supplemented by interviews with trainers/instructors and senior management. The organizational analysis comprises participant observation in work areas and team meetings, observation of instruction and feedback situations, shadowing of selected employees and instructors, and the systematic analysis of organizational artifacts, including work instructions, checklists, and logbooks. Data collection is structured as follows. Narrative interviews (Schütze, 2016) reconstruct life and work trajectories, learning and coping experiences, and key events, establishing the sequencing and logic of biographical learning. Organizational ethnography (Ybema et al, 2009) integrates participant observation, shadowing, and artifact analysis. Sampling follows a targeted logic to capture variation in gender configurations, task structures, instructional practices, and team cultures. Trainers and leaders are included to contextualize organizational decision-making. Analytical procedures are reconstructive concerning the interviews. Complementary thematic coding supports the identification of organization-relevant patterns or mechanisms. Ethics and quality assurance are central. I work with informed consent, clear voluntariness, and the right to withdraw without disadvantage. The study has been approved by my university's ethics committee. Language and conduct are resource-oriented, respectful, and sensitive to discrimination. Even though Butler's philosophy is anti-categorical in nature, thoughts on intersectionality are incorporated. Data are pseudonymized in line with GDPR and used solely for research; reports for the Socio-Economic Enterprise are prepared to preclude any inference to individuals. Fieldwork is conducted with time- and place-sensitive arrangements: interviews in low-distraction settings, observations by prior agreement, no interference in employment relations, and no performance assessment. Reflexive field notes will be taken.

The study will deliver a contribution to workplace learning by demonstrating how biographical learning trajectories and organizational conditions of possibility jointly shape competence development in a Social-Economic Enterprise (SEE) situated in the secondary labor market. At the enterprise level, the findings will specify how instructional routines, feedback practices, artifact ecologies (work instructions, checklists, logbooks), and team cultures can be configured to enable learning while sustaining agency, recognition, and belonging. For participants with histories of long-term unemployment, the study will map biographical learning and coping paths, identify turning points and situated supports that stabilize trajectories, and show how relational vulnerability—understood as exposure to norms, infrastructures, and affective economies—can become a resource for learning when organizational routines are attuned to it. Outcomes will thus include an empirically grounded account of how belonging and recognition are produced through performative routines and affective bonds, and how these, in turn, scaffold skill acquisition and confidence. At the labor market level, the research will inform transition or funding logics in the secondary labor market by clarifying which organizational configurations and time-sensitive supports facilitate reintegration without compromising dignity or learning quality.

Beck, V. (2018). Capabilities and Choices of Vulnerable, Long-Term Unemployed Individuals. Work, Employment and Society 32 (1): 3–19. doi:10.1177/0950017016686028. Butler, J. (1997). The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford University Press. Butler, J. (2004). Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. Verso. Carvajal Muñoz, M. R. (2022): Training policy among vulnerable unemployed groups: its contextualisation and difficult relationship with the capabilities approach, Journal of Vocational Education & Training, DOI: 10.1080/13636820.2022.2159860 De Greef, M., M. Segers, and D. Verte (2012). Understanding the Effects of Training Programs for Vulnerable Adults on Social Inclusion as Part of Continuing Education. Studies in Continuing Education 34 (3): 357–380. doi:10.1080/0158037X.2012.664126. Schütze, F. (2016). Biographieforschung und narratives Interview. Sozialwissenschaftliche Prozessanalyse. Grundlagen der qualitativen Sozialforschung, 1, 55-74. Usher, R., & Edwards, R. (2007). Lifelong learning-signs, discourses, practices (Vol. 8). Springer Science & Business Media. Ybema, S., Wels, H., & Yanow, D. (2009). Organizational ethnography: Studying the complexity of everyday life.