Learning liminality: a case of continuing education in Greece

Giorgos, Bithymitris and Papadopoulos, Orestis ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5086-5086 (2022) Learning liminality: a case of continuing education in Greece. URBANITIES : Journal of the Commission on Urban Anthropology, 12 (5). pp. 82-98. ISSN 2239-5725

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Abstract

This article addresses the issue of liminality in the making, as manifested by traineeships in the Greek tourism sector. Drawing from ethnographic data collected between 2016 and 2017, we examine the experiences of young trainees in tourism-related enterprises in a national context of mild economic recovery. Our primary focus is on the impact of the selected training scheme as regards both the trainees’ self-image and their perceptions of work, occupation and careers in the tourism sector, the so-called heavy industry of the Greek economy. Our findings suggest that instead of concluding with a meaningful and inspiring career path, the actors learn to live in an inbetween and transient state for long periods of time as they prepare themselves for navigating a deregulated labour market. Through the lens of liminality, we aim at a more complex understanding of the unsettling and disruptive condition that pertains to the threshold position of our informants, of the transient spatio-temporal characteristics of Continuing Education itself, but also aspects of the transformations and transitions that shook up Greek society and economy during the last decade