The social, cultural, technological, and economic progress achieved since the beginning of the 20th century has contributed to the improvement of the quality of life of populations in certain regions of the globe. However, the contrast between different population groups—from these and other regions—has been reinforced, and there are still situations of social vulnerability, with repercussions at different levels: personal, family, educational, labour, economic, cultural, and political.
Several international organizations and movements, national and local policies, and institutions from different areas have been called upon to organize themselves to meet the challenge of supporting these groups, with the aim of promoting and enabling their integration and active participation in their communities. For this reason, more and more of these entities seem to be focused on increasing the availability of support services for the construction of life projects for people of different ages, races, ethnicities, levels of education, and professional situations, as these services are a right of any citizen (e.g., Nieto, Pérez-González, & Riveiro, 2011).
However, responding to this challenge involves intervention at different levels and in different areas. On the personal level—of individual support—we must recognize that myriad new needs and requirements that people must deal with arise in the course of their lives. Meeting these challenges requires the development of new skills and competencies; also, situations of vulnerability, often prolonged or recurrent, are associated with a lack of these competences, and reinforce people’s inability to overcome the associated challenges. On the professional level, those who work in the field of information, guidance and advice in the construction of life projects are faced with new challenges arising from the uncertainty, insecurity, instability and unpredictability inherent in contemporary society, and for which their academic and professional background is not always adequate.
The Live2Work project brings a contribution to help to meet these challenges. To this end, it proposes materials and methodologies in a coherent and well-founded structure for intervention with populations in situations of professional vulnerability (specifically young adults between 18 and 30 years old), in order to promote the development of skills for the construction of sustainable life projects.
The present conceptual framework is organized in four parts.
The first part aims to present the Live2Work project with respect to its purpose, general objectives, and distinctive characteristics, as well as to summarize the different stages and outputs developed.
The second part focuses on the social relevance of the project, starting with an analysis and evaluation of the current European context on a set of migration, demographic, educational, and employability issues, and analyses the main understandings on social justice. It also includes a reflection on the current way of training (academic and professional) the different end users[1] that does not always adequately prepare them to deal effectively with the construction of life projects with a public in situations of professional vulnerability.
The third part analyses different theoretical contributions for the construction of life projects in people in situations of professional vulnerability, constituting the conceptual basis of the intervention. Thus, the concepts and principles of the Systemic Theory (McMahon & Patton, 2006; Patton & McMahon, 1997; Patton, McMahon & Watson, 2006), Chaos Theory (Conyne & Cook, 2004), the Ecological Approach (Bright & Pryor, 2011; Pryor & bright, 2007, 2011), and the Career Self-Management Models (Greenhaus & Callanan, 1994; King, 2001, 2004; Pinto, 2010; Noe, 1996) are presented, from which the rationale of the project was constructed, and which inspire its structure.
Finally, the fourth part presents the rationale and structure of the activities that constitute the toolbox an also explain the target group and the end-users.
[1] End users: those who work directly with the target groups, such as mentors, trainers and advisors.