I welcome this ambitious book which represents a genuinely original approach to comparative analysis. I was particularly impressed with its attempt to grasp the complexity of what is happening to young people in eight European countries with strikingly different histories. The finding which stood out for me is the enormous pressure that an increasingly instrumental approach to policy puts on young people, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. The book's attempt to relate changes in governance to the educational decision-making of young people is well captured in the three case studies and their analysis. Life histories have much to offer in fleshing out abstract policy ideas such as lifelong learning. * Michael Young, Emeritus Professor of Education, Institute of Education, University College London, UK * This is a thoughtful and thought-provoking collection of papers that sets out to trouble common-sense assumptions underpinning much of the master discourse around competitivity, lifelong learning, and the learning society. It does so in ways that are theoretically informed, with a firm grounding in empirical data from eight European countries. By giving importance to the specificity of the local, while carefully reflecting on the way this interacts in complex and multifarious ways with the transnational, this volume generates an impressive range of insights that help us better understand how the trajectories of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are the result of complex interactions between societal structures and individual subjective action. Such engagement with both lifecourse and governance perspectives help bring back the political, contesting the insidious processes of responsibilisation that the hegemonic discourses around 'employability' promote. With its rigorous approach to generating rich data and nuanced interpretation of the challenges young people face in navigating life, this is an example of collaborative European research at its very best. * Ronald G. Sultana, Director, Euro-Mediterranean Centre for Educational Research, University of Malta, Malta *