In the United Kingdom, the “aspirations” of young people from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds have been a much debated issue in media, policy and research. Public debates have tended to link stagnating educational and social mobility with a “lack” or a “poverty” of aspiration among young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Parallel to the public debate, a growing body of research examined the relationship between young people’s socio-economic backgrounds, their aspirations and educational achievement and trajectories. A number of scholars have criticised the debate on “aspiration” for its tendency to individualise responsibility for social inequality and normalise middle class values and lifestyles (see, for example, Brown, 2011; Watts & Bridges). Moreover, the debate has been seen as part of wider changes in labour market and welfare policies which promote self-reliant and entrepreneurial citizen both in the UK (Bradford & Hey, 2007; Raco, 2011) and at a European level (Spohrer, 2011). However, there is still little knowledge on how the “politics of aspiration” (Raco, 2009) is translated into local practices and enters the sense making of individuals.

Drawing on data collected within a PhD project, this paper examines the potential of a Foucaultian analysis for examining the "effects" of official discourse on young people’s constructions of their futures. While Foucault’s work has traditionally been applied to the study of historical phenomena, an increasing number of authors have advocated mobilising Foucault’s concepts to examine discourse in everyday context (Ball, 1994; Holstein & Gubrium, 2008; McKee, 2009). This paper will focus on how Foucault’s concept of governmentality can be employed to analyse the ways in which policy demands are salient in young people’s ways of governing themselves (McKee, 2009). It is argued that this approach can add to the understanding of the ways in which young people deploy dominant discourses as well as resist them. It is contended that this leads to a more complex understanding of young people from disadvantaged areas as not only exposed to oppression, but as actively exerting power on themselves. The resulting difficulty for researchers to critique inequality and disadvantage will be discussed. 

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