# Pathways in Agency and Alternative Futures Projectivity, Temporality and the Capability to Aspire

Barbara Hobson, Bénédicte Zimmermann

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# Pathways in Agency and Alternative Futures Projectivity, Temporality and the Capability to Aspire

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DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.29591.34724

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# Pathways in Agency and
Alternative Futures

## Projectivity, Temporality and the Capability
to Aspire

Barbara Hobson and Bénédicte Zimmermann
# Pathways in Agency and Alternative Futures:

## Projectivity, Temporality and the Capability to Aspire

Barbara Hobson¹, Bénédicte Zimmermann²,³

¹Stockholm University, ²EHESS, Paris, ³Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin

**Abstract:** How do individuals project into the future? How are aspirations activated? How do individuals and groups navigate the future in unsettled times? These questions resonate in the renewed scholarly interest in future making in the social sciences and, particularly, sociology. In this article we argue that the processes shaping how individuals imagine alternative futures and their potential for achieving them necessitates cross-fertilization in theoretical terrains. We combine concepts within the sociology of futures – projectivity, temporalities and the relational – with those of the capability approach – the capability to aspire, agency freedoms, conversion processes, all of which shape the potential for agency and the power to act. Through this cross-fertilization, we develop a multi-dimensional dynamic framework for agency and futures, operationalized in an analytical model that can be applied to empirical research. Situating agency and futures within specific institutional, organizational, societal and cultural contexts, we reveal the pathways through which aspirations are awakened and agency is enabled in which the capability to aspire is central. To illustrate our model, we use examples from our empirical research on the aspirations for alternative futures in two cases: transnational migrants employed in the care/domestic sector and low-skilled employees in multi-national firms. These narratives underscore how crucial the capability to aspire is for the agency of vulnerable groups to navigate the future in unsettled times.

**Keywords:** Agency, aspirations, capability, conversion processes, future making, power to act, projectivity, temporality, sociology of futures

**Acknowledgments:** First presented at Sociology Departmental Seminar, Stockholm University in February 2021, this paper, benefitted from the comments we received from colleagues there. We would also like to thank the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin) for providing the time and creative space for this project to evolve: for Barbara Hobson, with a research fellowship for a year, and for Bénédicte Zimmermann who has a permanent fellow position.

The Department of Sociology Working Paper Series N 41

ISSN 2002-7729

© Barbara Hobson and Bénédicte Zimmermann

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /></figure>

This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
How do individuals project into the future? How are aspirations activated? How do
individuals and groups navigate the future in unsettled times? These questions resonate in the
renewed scholarly interest in future making in the social sciences and, particularly, sociology.
In this article we argue that the processes shaping how individuals imagine alternative futures
is related to their potential for achieving them and that engaging with those processes
necessitates cross-fertilization in theoretical terrains. We combine concepts within the
sociology of futures- projectivity, temporalities and the relational – with those of the
capability approach – the capability to aspire, agency freedoms and conversion processes
shaping the potential to achieve.

The sociology of futures has a long history mirrored in visions of utopias and dystopias
(Adam and Groves 2007). In the current era of uncertain and unsettled times, there has been
a burgeoning of research on agency and future orientations. With its roots in the pragmatist
tradition (Mead 1932; Dewey 1950), the sociology of agency and future making engages with
the cognitive processes shaping how individuals actively construct the future.

Within the general framework of agency and futures, there are myriad concepts: projectivity (Mische 2009), aspirations and expectations (Vaisey 2010, Beckert 2016), trajectories and plans (Tavory and Eliasoph 2013), controversial scriptwritings and future scenarios (Chateauraynaud and Debaz 2017).

Various theories and perspectives underpin them. Tavory and Eliasoph (2013) construct a
theory of anticipation based upon how individuals coordinate the future through interaction
and negotiations with others in various temporal landscapes. Mische offers a framework for
cognitive dimensions in projective futures, focusing on temporalities, connectivity and
contingency. Hitlen and Johnson (2015) incorporate psychological aspects of subjective
agency, how perceptions of capacities, self-confidence and expectations shape future
orientations over the life course. Beckert (2013, 2016) addresses imagined futures through the
lens of “fictional expectations”, as narrative forms that make uncertainties cognitively
accessible and guide decision-making in economic markets.

Beyond their diversity, these approaches share a view of the future as a project that is always
in the making within an imaginative horizon of multiple plans and possibilities (Schütz
1967). Among them, the path breaking articles by Embirbayer and Mische (1998) and Mische
(2009) lay out the contours of a sociology of futures where actors are capable of formulating
projects with unforeseen outcomes. This dynamic view of future action assumes agency is
situated: our projects and plans are culturally and socially embedded, evolving in time and space as well as interactions with others (Dewey 1950; Mead 1932; Emirbayer and Mische 1998; Tavory and Eliasoph 2013). The cognitive and experiential aspects of projectivity, temporalities and relational dynamics are crucial dimensions for future making. However, they do not provide analytical space for how agency is enabled to pursue goals and the processes shaping our opportunities to achieve them.

New theoretical strategies are necessary to open up conceptual space for integrating situated institutional, societal and cultural dimensions into the analysis of agency and future orientations. New theoretical models need to be developed that can be applied to empirical research. In order to address this challenge, we introduce theoretical perspectives from two non-sociologists, in which imagining alternatives futures are fundamental: the capacity to aspire (Appadurai 2004; 2014) and the capability to aspire (Sen 1992, 1999). Anthropologist Ajun Appadurai's framework on the capacity to aspire engages with how individuals navigate the future within cultural and social spaces. Here, context is front and center where aspirations are not simply viewed as individual, but are formed in the “thick of social life” (Appadurai 2004). Economist Amartya Sen's contextualized multi-dimensional framework offers a dynamic agency approach for analyzing future orientations in which the agency is nested in specific societal and institutional environments. Although the capability to aspire is not a specific concept that Sen has used in his writings, it is implicit in Sen's approach and others who have applied his framework (Lambert et al. 2012; Hobson 2014; Hart 2016; Ray 2016; Flechtner 2017). The capability to aspire lies at the heart of his dynamic concept of agency in which he asks us to consider not only what a person does, but what are her opportunities to be and do, to lead a life that she intrinsically values, and to choose and develop projects and alternative ways of living. At the interface between having aspirations and the opportunities to achieve them, the capability to aspire strongly links projectivity to the perception people have of the scope of possibilities afforded by everyday life.

Our purpose in this paper is twofold. (1) We seek to *extend the theoretical borders of the sociology of futures* through a cross-fertilization that reaches across conceptual domains: the cognitive approach of the sociology of futures and the capability approach. (2) We *develop a multi-layer and dynamic framework for engaging with agency and futures* that can be operationalized in an analytical model and applied in empirical and comparative research. Mische (2009) has called grounding the sociology of futures in cultural, institutional and relational contexts. However how agency is embedded in these contexts remains unspecified.
The gap we seek to fill is how agency and future orientations are *concretely* embedded in layers of context, and how they interact in shaping people's projectivity, agency and choice in future making. When considering agency and future orientations, we recognize that the situated actor can interact within multiple overlapping contexts. Contexts might be cultural, relational, institutional or organizational, territory bounded - from the local to the global – or even virtual with the internet exposing persons with a narrow aspirational window for alternative possibilities and pathways for change (Ray 2003).

Bridging the cognitive, experiential and relational dynamics of the sociology of futures with the capability to aspire, necessitates that we situate agency and futures within specific contexts that allow us to *explore how agency is activated* in the process of imagining futures, and *how it is intertwined with the capability to aspire*.

We use examples from earlier research to illustrate the model we draw from this cross-fertilization. These encompass two comparative projects in which the future as a project is a salient dimension and where the empirical research was conducted in a temporal landscape of uncertainty following the financial crisis. In both these cases, our focal point is on those people with fewer means and resources and weaker capabilities.

One is based upon Hobson's project on the aspirations for alternative futures among transnational migrants employed in the care domestic services sector in Spain and Sweden (Hellgren and Hobson 2021). Whether these aspirations are activated depends upon social networks and family support, but also importantly on specific national policy contexts that can dampen or enable the capability to aspire (Hobson et al. 2018; Fahlén and Dominguez-Sanchez 2018). The other is derived from Zimmermann's study of employees' capabilities to aspire for professional development with respect to opportunities for training and upgrading skills in global firms based in France and Germany. Aspirations here take shape in the interactions between individuals' pathways, the multinational training policy and implementations, industrial relations and public policies devices (Zimmermann 2020a

In the following sections, we first present some of the conceptual linkages in our cross-fertilization of the capability to aspire and sociology of futures, and the different dimensions of the model that follow from it. Afterwards we present our process-oriented model and illustrate it through examples and narratives from our two empirical cases.
# Future Making: Cross Fertilization and dimensions of the model

Dewey, who has during the last decades influenced the cognitive turn in the sociology of future making (Emibayer and Mische 1998; Mische 2009) and been one century ago a for-runner of what we call today the capability approach (Zimmermann 2020b), provides a cognitive and experiential lens to elaborate the cross-fertilization across conceptual terrains.

Sociologists operationalizing Sen's capability framework who have incorporated cognitive experiential and cultural dimensions also provide the basis for dialogue across theoretical frameworks in the sociology of futures. Zimmermann (2006), through her pragmatist experiential lens, has introduced a situated and relational approach into the capability framework. Hobson has elaborated cognitive mechanisms shaping conversion of resources: the perception of scope of alternatives and the sense of entitlement to make claims for policies and programs that can enable agency freedoms (Hobson et al 2014b and Hobson 2018). Hvinden and Halverson (2018) integrate feedback processes into their analysis of how capability and active agency are enabled, with respect to the participation of the disabled.
These perspectives and the process-oriented approach that they embody, lay the groundwork for a cross-fertilization in conceptual terrains in which situated agency is a core dimension in the multi-dimensional model.

We now turn to the different dimensions in our model that follow from this cross fertilization: Projectivity, temporalities, the relational and the capability to aspire

## Projectivity

Building upon the dynamic and process-oriented concept of projectivity (Emirbayer and Mische 1998; Mische 2009), we view the project as a process in the making, nested in different layers of context, in which the individual is situated in temporalities and shaped through interactions with others.

While Mische's focus is on the cultural and cognitive groundings of projectivity, our aim is to elaborate further the conceptual tools, which allow us to empirically grasp how future making “shapes and is shaped by social processes” (Mische 2009). This requires extending Mische's framework by addressing more closely the institutional and social embed density of projectivity. To this purpose, we complement Emirbayer and Mische's reading of Dewey (Emirbayer and Mische 1998) by highlighting the conceptual links between projectivity and
the capability to aspire in order to empirically investigate the processes involved in agency,
choice and future making.

Though he rarely uses the term projectivity, Dewey offers a set of conceptual tools that allow
us to empirically investigate the processes involved in future making. He invites us to
consider imagining futures as an activity that is anchored both in lived experience and a logic
of inquiry. As a cognitive and reflexive process, the logic of inquiry is not limited to
scientific matters but is part of everyday life. It provides a bridge between projectivity and the
capability to aspire linking projectivity to ends in view, what an individual conceives of as
being a desired future end (Dewey 1950: 225-226; Dewey 1965 [1938]: 44), or as Sen would
express it, to a future we value.

For Dewey, ends in view involve a process by which the foreseen consequences from an
activity adds meaning and directs its further course. Far from being the mere product of
individual impulse, ends in view depends upon a person's situated experience (involving the
present) and life course (involving the past). By contributing to shape the potential to achieve
what we value (Sen 1998), ends in view constitutes an important aspect of the capability to
aspire.

With Dewey's pragmatist approach in the foreground, we consider projectivity as lived
experience, as the crucible for future imaginings. Following his conceptualization of
experience (Dewey 1965 [1938]): 23-52), we address projectivity along two dimensions: a
longitudinal one that engages people's temporal experience articulating past and present into
a logic of inquiry about how the future could or should look like, and a lateral dimension
designed by the interactions between a person and her environment, and engaging her
relational experience.

The longitudinal dimension of projectivity is imbricated in temporalities and contingencies.
Referred to by Dewey as the reflective capacity to read the future, it involves continuity that
binds the past to the future in a creative way (Dewey 1965 [1938]): 23-52). Continuity does
not mean repetition of the past, rather past experiences produce a "reserve of knowledge"
(Schütz and Luckmann 1973) that shapes our ways of perceiving and producing frames of
reference that might be transformed, adapted by their reflexive incorporation into the
experience of the present and the projections into the future. Together with the lateral
dimension of projectivity that involves people's relational experiences in everyday life,
temporalities and contingencies make projectivity a dynamic process where individual's
aspirations meet at the crossroad between their past and present experience within a multi-
layered environment, which from a capability perspective encompasses the institutional,
cultural and societal context.

***Temporalities and contingencies***

Time and temporalities are core dimensions in the scholarship on futures and agency where past, present and future meet in how individuals actively shape future aspirations (Dewey, 1965 [1938]; Emibaryer and Mische 1998).

Temporality has multiple levels and orientations: it can involve immediate and long-term perspectives, revealed in differences in perceptions of time horizons (Mische 2009): how far ahead the individual plans her future, which is among others influenced by age, life phase and social position. Gender differences in time horizons are apparent in women's postponement of future projects advancing their education and careers during their childbearing years, which affect their future prospects (Evertsson 2016). Education and social class position also affect planning and building of scenarios. However, the processes shaping this outcome and whether education is pathway for future goals is contested. The assumption in much of the literature on future making is that more resourced middle-class families are more likely to engage in long-term planning than those of the working class (Emibaryer and Mische 1998; Vaisey 2010). Others, such as Lund (2018) nuance this perspective on class and future orientations arguing that the working class engage with different plans for the future, involving social ties, community relationships rather than education and career. Lamont makes a similar point in her book among working class men and France (Lamont 2009).

Beyond gender and socio-economic factors shaping time horizons, imagining futures takes place in temporal landscapes, which reflect specific historical/contextual times. For instance, uncertainty and risk are characterizations that not only abound in our political, social and academic discourses, encapsulated in images of fluid modernity and the risk society (Beck 1992; Giddens, 1991; Tavory and Eliasoph 2013), but also in lived experiences (Kanjou-Mrčela and Černigo-Sadar 2015).

Events and contingencies can result in a change in perception of one's scope of alternatives, a rescaling of expectations and reassessing of projections for the future. These can involve individual events, such as divorce, death of a partner, loss of a job, and collective events at the global level. The 2008 economic crisis had lasting effects on individual aspirations long
after the initial shock of financial collapse and bankruptcies. More recently, the global
pandemic has resulted in shutdowns and layoffs placing families at risk and generating an
atmosphere of uncertainty that may have similar effects, upending alternative futures. For the
thousands of migrants leaving war-torn countries, ravaged by ethnic and political conflict,
particularly those stranded on the Greek Islands of Moira and Lesbos, the global disruption
has meant more than a recalibration of future, but a total eclipse in projectivity and future
making.

Tavory and Eliasoph (2013), however, make the point that this temporal landscape of
uncertainty does not necessarily lead toward a degeneration in future imaginings. Rather it
can lead toward a shift in how persons construct narratives and projects (ibid.: 928) and ways
in which they relate to the past and coordinate futures differently. There is some evidence for
this in a study of Swedish youth, showing that in orienting themselves to their future working
life, the young and highly educated have adapted to uncertainty and appear at ease with it
– viewing it in terms of open-ended futures (Ye 2018). Yet, this group may represent a
minority; others in a less advantaged position may not perceive the restructuring of work in a
global economy with the same equipoise.

In a similar vein, temporal landscapes of uncertainty can appear salient to some and not
others. For instance, the collective threat that global warming and climate change poses to
humans and other species may be ignored by large swathes of the populations. While for
others, the sense of risk is deeply felt, pervasive in their everyday choices, directly
influencing individuals’ horizon of projectivity. Recent studies of birth intentions reflect this.
One such example is the unexplained precipitous decline in birthrates in Norway, a well-off
very stable country (Lappegård et. al 2022).

***The relational***

Our future projects and alternative scenarios are formed in interaction with others as
underlined by Dewey. Relational dynamics play an important role in how we envision the
future: the quality of the interactions we have with others and the environment we live in, but
also whether we view our futures as individual independent or linked to family, communities
(Mische 2009) or any other group. Rather than an either-or, the social embed density of
projectivity varies by cultural context (Appadurai 2014). Social networks and group
affiliations, and other relational interactions influence aspirations and imaginings in diverse
ways (Mische 2009; Tavory and Eliasoph 2013). They can act as resources as well as
constraints on possible futures. Szalia and Schiff (2014) show how ethnic group loyalty
inhibits youth from leaving neighborhoods with poor-performance schools. At the same time,
networks within and beyond one's community and neighborhood can offer alternative
scenarios, narratives that expand projective horizons (Lund 2018).

Relational Dynamics in families play a crucial role in how we imagine the future. For instance, migrants who are expected to send remittances in the form of monthly payments for their children's care and/or education in their country of origin often sacrifice their own projects and future making, Alternatively, family networks are crucial for migrants coping with the challenges upon arrival in a new country, finding their employment and importantly providing financial support to obtain language skills

***The Capability to Aspire***

The capacity and capability to aspire have been used interchangeably (Baillergeau and Duyvendack 2019); they both address the potential of individuals to imagine alternative ways of living, while underlying that aspirations are never just individual but take shape in interaction with others and the contexts shaping them. It is where Appadurai and Sen's account of how aspirations can be translated into action coincide.

Appadurai (2004) considers aspirations as cultural *capacities*, dependent on how individual and collective actors navigate cultural and social spaces, shaped by language capability, norms, and traditions, but also access to networks. Those with high education and economic resources are best able to utilize norms, ideas and justifications (“cultural regimes”) to project their futures and fulfill their aspirations. Conversely, possibilities for alternative futures appear as distant horizons for those with the least power and voice, who tend to accept their lot. However, Appadurai asserts that the capacity to aspire can be awakened and activated even among the poorest. His study of Mumbai slum dwellers revealed that those with the barest of citizenship participation when mobilized, and in this case with help of Ngos, recognized their collective voice and power to influence their futures.

The capacity to aspire and the capability to aspire are interlocking dimensions: the awakening of aspirations and possibilities to achieve them, that is, having the resources that enable us to imagine how we can steer our futures. With its emphasis on cultural capacities and the differences in cultural regimes, Appadurai's capacity to aspire, provides a bridge to sociology of futures through scripts and repertoires for engendering aspirations. However, the capability
to aspire specifies the mechanisms that enable agency and the potential for achieving these alternatives.

*Agency and the capability to aspire*

For those with few resources, the capability to aspire is the crucial dimension for projecting into the future,<fnref n="1" /> akin to Dewey’s insights on future aims as “ends in view” (1950: 225; 271-72).

Sen’s hypothetical question, what would persons choose if they had alternatives, is in fact an exercise in projectivity. With respect to imagining alternatives, Sen’s concept of agency-freedom, i.e. the possibility to achieve what one values, embraces the sense of open-endedness in futures, although recognizing that our projects are bounded by personal abilities and the natural environment (Sen 1992). Yet they are not in Sen’s perspective just determined by the conditioning of our past. Agency can propel us into the future: expand our horizons and activate our capability to aspire.

*Converting Resources*

However, capability is not merely about agency and the possibility to realize one’s choice, but also what Sen (2009) refers to as opportunity (freedoms) that pertain to the scope and process in choice. Emerging from multilayered contexts (institutional, societal, organizational) and situated agency, opportunity freedoms need in turn to be converted into valued achievements.

Viewed from the capability lens, aspirations, our imagined futures, are encased in real options, “practical possibility” (Sen 1985: 15), “substantive freedom” (Sen 1992). *Whereas projectivity is a process reflecting how we envision the future, continually remaking our goals, the capability framework engages with our potential for achieving them, the means and resources we have to convert our projects into agency-freedom for choice, referred to as conversion factors* (Robeyns 2005).

Conversion factors are key components in the capability framework. They can encompass a range of institutional, societal, and cultural resources. For instance, in our empirical cases, these encompass laws and rights (Barnard et al. 2001), discourses for claiming rights (Peper

<footnote n="1">¹ Vaisey (2010: 85-86) observed in his study of future educational aspirations among youth that for the middle-class education was assumed, automatic, where aspirations and expectations coalesce. For the poor, having aspirations were much more important for their likelihood to expect to continue their education than for the non-poor, however, he does not engage with how these aspirations were activated.</footnote>
et al. 2014), specific policy instruments for worklife balance (Hobson et al. 2014b), enterprise organizational policies and practices (Subramanian and Zimmermann 2017); specific actors, stakeholders (Salais and Villeneuve 2004), and finally, family and neighborhood supports. Embedded in different layers of contexts, conversion factors can be positive or negative, **dampen or spark our capacity to aspire, as well as weaken or enable agency and possibilities to achieve our goals and life projects** (Sen, 1992, 1999).

Given our purpose is to engage with potential for change (agency freedoms for alternative futures), we view this process in terms of conversion processes (Hobson 2017; Zimmermann 2011) and how they are tailored to specific future projects and orientations. By focusing on conversion processes, we underscore the dynamic and multiple interactions involved in converting resources into agency freedoms and how these processes are interwoven into cognitive and experiential dimensions of the capability approach (Hobson, 2018).

## A Process-Oriented Model

The model below illustrates a framework for operationalizing a dynamic concept of agency and future making that can be applied to empirical research.² Rather than a causal model, it seeks to reveal the processes shaping capability for alternative futures and highlights the interactions among different levels of analysis: the temporal and relational aspects (projectivity); the cultural and structural dimensions in the capability to aspire; the cognitive dimensions that reach the inter-subjective and experiential dimensions (the perception of scope of alternatives; the sense of entitlement to make claims). Situated agency is the thread that runs through the cross-fertilization in these processes.
<figure><img src="image_6.png" /><figcaption>Figure 1: Pathways in Agency and Alternative Futures: a multi-dimensional model</figcaption></figure>

## Situated Agency

Situated agency appears as central node in the model connecting the agency focused sociology of futures (projectivity), with its cognitive and experiential lens via temporal and relational dynamics to the agency centered capability approach, with its pathways to the capability to aspire and the conversion of resources into agency freedoms and choice.

Situated agency is a multi-dimensional and dynamic concept that reaches beyond the notion of social positioning, even multiple positionings (Sen 1992, 1999) including class, gender, ethnicity/race, age, disability and their intersections (McCall 2005, Collins and Bilge 2016).

The pragmatist notion of situated action, the nexus where past, present and future temporalities meet and experience unfolds, does not exclude consideration of the effects of position. However, it foregrounds the interactions of the individual with the environment that she acts within. Individuals are situated in time and in relations to others, they interact with social, organizational and institutional environments, all of which, are fluid and dynamic (Abbott 2016). A process-oriented approach, what Abbott refers to as processual analysis, is integral to our approach of situated agency. It integrates time and change within the framework of situated action and assumes that the individual interacting in the social world is an ongoing process, making, unmaking and remaking itself (Abbott 2016).
As illustrated in the model, situated agency shapes and is shaped by individual, cultural, societal, institutional and organizational resources for imagining alternative futures and how they are converted into action. However, agency-based projectivity does not only require access to resources, but also involves intersubjective dimensions, where the capability to aspire is reflected in two cognitive processes: the perception of one's scope of alternatives and the sense of entitlement to make claims for alternative futures (visualized as arcs traversing across the dimensions in the model). Both are processes in formulating visions of the future and scenarios for change: what we perceive as possible (Hitlin and Johnson 2015) and our openness to opportunities and pathways, which reveal differences in agency and choice in everyday situations. Both are transversal dimensions in our framework of agency and futures, arcs that reach from projectivity to the capacity to aspire, conversion of resources and impact the power to act. These processes are shaped by specific contexts within temporal landscapes.

For example, migrants, with high education and expectations for better futures, once in receiving countries, where they are only offered low-wage dead-end jobs, soon adjust perceptions of their alternatives for the future (Hobson et al. 2018). Similarly, low skilled workers who for years have been excluded from a company's training programs, when offered, have adjusted their expectations to the point that they are unable to express any training aspiration or even their need for them (Lambert et al. 2012).

Imagining the future in unsettled and uncertain times depends upon who is projecting into the future, where and in which contexts – involving the family, firm, community, the nation state, and beyond the state, global institutions. Embedding agency in a multi-layered context is the ground from which we view how projectivity is sketched into temporal landscapes, how the capacity and capability to aspire are awakened and how potential to achieve goals appear feasible and the power to act enabled.

## Imagining alternative futures: Lived experiences

We illustrate our model through examples and narratives of lived lives. Given that this is an exploratory paper, we confine our analysis to two cases, gleaned from our earlier empirical
research: the migrant domestic worker,<fnref n="3" /> and the low skilled factory worker.<fnref n="4" /> We situate them in specific institutional and organizational contexts and time frames. Through Yolanta's and Shao Fen's accounts, we highlight how projectivity and perception of future possibilities take shape when the capability to aspire is connected to real opportunity (freedoms) and converted into agency freedoms for choice and the power to act upon them. Revealed in these narratives of situated experiences are the complexities and dynamic aspects of conversion processes: the importance of specific laws and policies and organizational cultures at particular moments in time and life course for some and not others; what role family members and networks play in these processes.

## Ends in View

Yolanta migrated from Poland in 2006 when she was 26 years old. At the time of the interview in 2014 she was 34 years old. In Poland, she was educated to be a tailor at a vocational high school, but left her home country because of the shortage of work, searching for more opportunities in Sweden. As many economic migrants do, she followed her country women, migrating to Sweden a year after her cousin and her cousin's husband, with whom she is still living. She settled in a Swedish suburb with a large Polish community and extensive networks for job seekers.

She and her cousin were first employed by a Polish woman who ran an illegal household cleaning service, and took a large portion of their earnings. After a year, Yolanta began working on her own, the same year the government passed a reform to formalize the domestic service sector through tax subsidies, which led to an expansion in the sector. For Yolanta, this meant she had to learn Swedish to be able to contract directly with clients, which she did through the state supported language school (SFI). Although courses are free, migrants in this low-wage precarious sector, often have too little control over their work hours and/or earn too little to be able to reduce these hours in order to devote time to language study. Those who could do this had the support of a partner or family member. Yolanta was among this group.

<footnote n="3">³ The interviews with migrant domestic workers were conducted in three cities: Madrid, Barcelona and Stockholm between 2013-2014. For a description of the data; see Hobson et al. 2018).</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ The investigation covered a French and a German subsidiary of six multinational firms. For a presentation of the inquiry and data, see Zimmermann, 2020a.</footnote>
Language capability is a key divide between good and bad jobs in migrant domestic work.
Those without these skills are often paid lower wages and forced to work extra hours without
pay in a market dominated by thousands of small firms competing with one another (Hobson
et. al 2018). Yolanta's knowledge of Swedish enabled her to exert more control over wages,
working hours and conditions, as well as look for employment with companies whose
employees are covered by collective agreements. Subsequently, she landed a secure full-time
job with a large company cleaning hotel, with decent wages, benefits and unemployment
rights and social security. This situation is hardly the norm in this sector.

As a result, Yolanta began earning enough to maintain a decent standard of living, send
remittances of about 1000-2000 SEK home to her parents each month, and save money for
future studies. She intends to live permanently in Sweden and sees new opportunities on the
horizon: "there is work here and the possibility to educate oneself." After living and working
in Sweden for over seven years, she is now a permanent resident, which paves the way for
projecting into the future and constructing an alternative scenario. She intends to become
more proficient in Swedish and plans to gain the credentials necessary to work in the health
care sector, where she sees prospects for good jobs.

Yolanta lacks a gymnasium education, in contrast to the most migrant domestic workers in
Sweden who have reached that level or have higher education. Yet, once settled in Sweden,
she recast her expectations and began envisioning a future with real options for change.
These were activated through her perception of "ends in view" through educational
opportunities. In Sweden, higher education in Sweden is free and permanent residents can
also receive a stipend, along with low-interest government loans.

For Yolanta and other migrants we interviewed, family support was decisive for their plans to
study, to convert opportunity freedoms into agency and choice in futures. Another resource
that Yolanta could draw upon in the capability to aspire was the well-established Polish
community in Sweden, which provided networks for jobs and legal advice through active
immigrant associations and websites.

Yolanta's optimism for future prospects and projections of alternative scenarios were not
exceptional. Most of the other migrants we interviewed expressed similar aspirations and
expectations for change: better jobs were out there and educational opportunities if one
mastered the language. About half of the migrants said that they intended to study or upgrade
their skills, in line with the outcomes in a large-scale survey done the same year as our
interviews. Only about one-third in our study had specific plans beyond enrolling in a
language course (Hobson et.al. 2018). Few stated that they expected to continue working in
the sector in the next year.<fnref n="5" /> However many would not be able to overcome obstacles,
standing in their way of achieving their aspirations. For instance, those migrant women who
felt the pull of obligation to provide the mainstay of financial support for families back home,
had a weak sense of entitlement to develop their own projects. Others lacked the social
networks and resources to realize their aspirations.

The extent to which institutional context can enable the capability to aspire and facilitate the conversion of resources into agency freedoms was underscored in our comparison of migrants working in the domestic service sector in Sweden with those in Spain, the other case in our study. The situation in Spain, with its low union density and general acceptance of informal work and precarity, offers a stark contrast. Despite laws designed to regulate the sector, the lack of governance persists, reflecting both the structural features of the market where the employer is a household (Spain) rather than the firm (Sweden), and the failure of political will (Hobson and Hellgren 2020). Moreover, unlike Sweden, Spain offers no stipends to migrants seeking training or higher education. Given the residual effects of the global financial crisis on high unemployment in the Spanish economy, few migrant care/domestic workers aspired to anything beyond finding more employment. None were entitled to unemployment insurance; which household employers are exempted from providing. Only 4 of our 60 interviewees in Spain had plans to study and these were women who already had tertiary degrees and whose husbands were earning good wages. With two-thirds of these workers either under- or unemployed and wages slashed, their aspirations for better futures were undone and remittances to families discontinued (Hellgren and Serrano 2019).

Migrant domestic workers, although employed in a precarious low-wage sector, are not a homogeneous group, varying by age, marital status, migrant status and level of education, whether they migrate alone or together with their families. Overwhelmingly, they are women who migrate from poorer to richer countries, from the Global South to North, from Eastern to Western Europe, all seeking a better life for themselves and their families. Whether these

<footnote n="5">⁵ The quantitative survey, mentioned above, was carried out in Sweden the same year as our qualitative interviews. The results showed that 47% of those employed in the sector, with higher education obtained in the Swedish system were able to move clerical/professional jobs. The same study found that over half remained in the sector (Fahlén and Sanchez- Domíuez 2018).</footnote>
migrant workers have a sense of entitlement to claim opportunities and realize aspirations
also hinges on the political climate toward migrants mirrored in the media where migrants
can be vilified or celebrated. Their sense of entitlement often involves other collective actors,
for instance, unions and NGOS and social movements supporting domestic worker rights. All
of these form the multi-dimensionality in the conversion processes that enable opportunity
and agency freedoms.

Awakening Aspirations

When we meet Shao Fen, she is a 32-year-old single mother with a 10-year-old girl. She has been working for the past five years as a shift worker at Elec's assembly line where electric wirings and harnesses for airplanes are manufactured. Born in France of parents with an immigrant background, her educational and professional pathway has not been without obstacles. Having left school at 16 years old without any certificate, she held a variety of instable and poorly paid jobs as waitress, cashier, etc., before an unplanned pregnancy when she was 22. This biographical turning-point caused her to be unemployed; unable to earn her living, she returned to her parents' house with her baby. For a year and a half she stayed at home raising her newborn, unable to forge any meaningful future and not even able to search for subsistence work. Thanks to the support of her father, who was working at Elec, she was recruited there first as a temporary worker, having her contract renewed over two years, then with a long-term full-time contract that allowed her to leave her parents' house and settle in her own apartment with her daughter. Less than a year after having gotten a stable job, she entered a continuing-education project of four years whose target was a bachelor degree in applied foreign languages. She made an arrangement with her manager to be permanently on the morning shift so as to have time for continuing education in the afternoon when her daughter was at school. She also made an arrangement with her daughter's father to have him pick the daughter every morning and bring her to school. And when Shao Fen had late evening courses, her parents cared for the young girl.

Shao Fen's motive for this heavy investment of time and energy is her aspiration to leave
Elec's assembly line and join the international-communication department of Flybest, the
multinational group of which Elec is a part. Flybest is known for its professional-
development policy which helps assembly-line workers to climb the career ladder. Although
preparing and obtaining the required qualification certificate is by no means sufficient for
reaching a desired position – simply allowing one to compete for it in case a position
becomes vacant –, Flybest's support for continuing education and internal promotion
awakens the hope and aspirations of a worker for further professional development
(Zimmermann 2020a).

In Shao Fen's narrative the family and workplace appear to be the two most important
elements in support of her aspirations. Whereas Shao Fen's parents provide her with both
material and affective support, helping her to alleviate the difficulties of being a single
mother, the workplace helps to awaken her aspiration for professional development through
opportunities and support for continuing training, along with the manager's trustful and
supportive attitude.

Interestingly, Shao Fen does not mention any institutional support. Yet French law compels companies to help finance continuing training by allocating to it a percentage of their total wage bill (one percent at the time of this inquiry). But this money is dedicated to job-adaptation training rather than professional development. Nor does Shao Fen make use of the individual-training right instituted in 2004 and transformed in 2014 into a personal-training account allowing workers to follow a training of their choice independent of the company. The amount of the allowance (500 euros a year) is grossly inadequate for financing a professional-development scheme. The company's support for Shao Fen's project was much more than required by the institutional provisions.

Yet despite legal regulations, only few French companies finance continuing education
programs for low-qualified, blue-collar workers like Shao Fen. Elec atypically financed Shao
Fen's training costs (her own investment was one of time, as her training took place outside
of working hours) which places Elec among the less than 10 percent of French capability-
friendly companies as regards professional development (Zimmermann 2011; Lambert et al.
2012). Financial commitment alone does not make the difference. Shao Fen's narrative
strongly underscores the role that managers play in the process of converting the training
resources on offer by the organization into actual achievements as well as showing how they
help to foster an employee's voice. She feels recognized and strongly supported by her boss
who helps nurture her self-confidence and sense of entitlement. He provides her with advice
as well as information about Flybest training policy and what exactly she is entitled to, and he
has responded in positive fashion to her requests for the adjustment of her working hours.
"He gave me a chance," she says, while the trade-unions, which do exist at Elec played no
direct role in the process. Although they care about inclusiveness and equal access to training
resources, trade unions are not able to provide enough to help to support individual
capabilities to flourish in the workplace (Lambert et al. 2012; Zimmermann 2020a). All
things being equal, the capability for aspiring to professional development is strongly related
to how employees perceive the chances of their projects being realized, and this perception is
partly shaped by the actual practices of the company they work in.

Shao Fen's case shows that future making requires a minimum of opportunity-freedom and agency-freedom, which in their turn nurture a sense of having some power to act in order to make such alternatives feasible. In the absence of any such sense, however, situated agency becomes negated and the capability to aspire is frozen in place. In Shao Fen's case the decisive issue in nurturing her capability to aspire is how exactly the organizational context interacts with other layers of her personal life.

Aspirations are not only a matter of individual dispositions and preferences. They flourish in
the interaction between a person and her environment. Beyond the institutional and societal
context, the workplace also constitutes an important component for working people.
Individuals tend to adapt their preferences for professional development according to the
opportunities (freedoms) which the organization makes available, so that aspirations can be
annihilated or stimulated depending on the organizational culture (Lambert et al. 2012).
Organizations contribute not only to influence the scope of opportunities workers have through
the resources and constraints they provide, they can also support workers' agency and sense of
entitlement through the empowering role that managers play. As gatekeepers of a company's
training opportunities, managers are key actors in the empowerment of low-qualified
employees with respect to professional development. Therefore, fostering workers' capabilities
is not just a matter of human-resource policy but of organizational culture in bridging human-
resource policy with work organization and managerial practices. As an active element in
shaping employees' situated agency and projectivity, the organizational culture is particularly
important for low-qualified workers who are often poorly endowed with individual resources
other than familial ones.

Conclusion

We have sought to extend the borders of the sociology of futures through cross-fertilization
of different conceptual domains: linking cognitive experiential aspects of projecting futures
to the capability to aspire and opportunity to agency (freedoms) and choice and the potential
to achieve goals.

We argue that opening the black box of projectivity, agency and futures requires a dynamic
and multi-dimensional framework making visible the processes underlying how the capacity
to aspire is awakened, the capability to aspire activated and power to act enabled. To address
these processes cross-fertilization through conceptual domains is required: intersections in
cognitive and experiential processes of future making, where the past, present and future meet
at the horizon of ends in view, a point where Dewey and Sen meet. We underscore the
capability to aspire as a core component in this process, particularly for vulnerable and
disadvantaged as illustrated by our two cases, the migrant domestic worker and the blue-
collar worker with little education. Their future making takes shape when real opportunity
becomes available for them, along with the resources to convert these possibilities in agency
(freedoms) and choice. These resources can emerge in national, local, trans-national and
global settings, in the form of policies that can be utilized, rights exercised and discourses
that empower those with weak capabilities to claim them. They can also be of non-
institutional nature such as support provided by social networks. Conversion of these
resources into agency freedoms operates within multiple environments: the family, school,
firm, neighbourhood, as illustrated by Yolanta's and Shao Fen's cases.

Our model visualizes the pathways from projectivity to the potential to achieve, together with
the complex interactions in navigating the future. Our narratives reveal how imagining future
alternatives is enacted in the lived experience of situated actors in time and space (Dewey,
1938; and Appadurai, 2004). Through their voices, we are able to capture the intersubjective
cognitive dimensions in projections of futures and the capability to aspire. What they
perceive as their scope of alternatives can be recast with new possibilities and propelled by
opportunity freedoms, which anticipate the potential to achieve. Their sense of entitlement to
pursue their goals is embedded in institutional, societal and organizational environments and
 animated by cultural repertories, such as lifelong learning for the unskilled and successful
stories of immigrant through education. Through these multi-layered mechanisms connected
to the capability to aspire and power to act, we reveal the value of our cross-fertilization in
conceptual territories.

Our dynamic agency framework offers conceptual space for the capacity to aspire to be
awakened throughout the life course and among those with the least resources and voice. As
the experiences of Yolanta and Shao Fen highlight, the capacity to aspire is activated through
the capability to aspire. The conversion processes for the potential to achieve was driven by specific policies enacted at the national or firm level, but, also importantly, enabled by a range of actors: family members, a manager's support in a global firm that promoted professional training for unskilled workers (Shao Fen). For Yolanta, family support and social networks, as well as collective actors, such as unions and NGOs made possible the agency (freedoms) of migrants in Sweden for alternative futures choices that were not realizable for their counterparts in Spain. Nonetheless, our data do not reveal whether their potential to achieve and power to act resulted in the achievement of their goals. Nor do we know if their example enhanced the possibilities for others to follow in their footsteps. This is a project for future research.

Our two cases illustrate how the multi-dimensional and dynamic agency-centered model we propose provides a rich interpretative framework for empirical research in the sociology of futures. We have constructed a model for imagining alternative futures through the prism of a sociology of experience refracted through institutional, cultural and societal contextual differences that allows for comparisons across countries and between individuals and groups with diverse aspirations and ends in view and the possibilities to pursue them. It provides scope for exploring comparisons of narratives of futures over time and in different life phases, as well as through generations, the latter revealed in the narratives of low expectations and aspirations that are transmitted from first to second generation immigrants (Aradhya et al 2020). The interactive dimensions in the model – resources, conversion processes, perceived scope of alternatives, and sense of entitlement – offer pathways for generating mechanisms for explaining how multiple forms of disadvantage operate at different levels of analysis with a multi-level lens: through the family, firm, neighbourhood, nation state and beyond.

We lay emphasis on vulnerable groups because they lack individual means and resources to actuate alternative futures. Their situation foregrounds the normative aspect of Sen's approach, that assumes collective responsibility for creating opportunity freedoms for those with weak capability. This perspective is critical during periods of upheaval and uncertainty, such as the global recession, climate crises, and the widespread pandemic when the paperless migrants, precarious workers, and the long-term poor, suffer disproportionality (Hellgren and Seranno 2019; Hvinden and Shoyen 2017).
Tavory and Eliasoph (2013) highlight the ways in which contingencies lead toward recalibration of futures and how macro-forces not only can “invite” people to imagine different futures at a specific historical moment, but also how in interaction, people negotiate those futures. Dewey’s insights on the fragility of futures, underscores the sense of danger and risk facing the living creature (Dewey, 1950). Both impel us to ask how individual and collective situated agents navigate the future in unsettled times. Looking from the lens of threats on a global scale, we look forward to research on the long-term consequences of living with extreme uncertainty and risk on the capability to aspire.

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