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Redundancy as a critical life event

This article investigates the process of moving on from redundancy in the Welsh steel industry among individuals seeking new careers. It identifies a spectrum of career change experience, ranging from those who had actively planned their career change, prior to the redundancies, to those ‘at a career crossroads’, for whom there were tensions between future projects, present contingencies and past identities. It suggests that the process of moving on from redundancy can be better understood if we are able to identify, not just structural and cultural enablers and constraints but also the temporal dimensions of agency that facilitate or limit transformative action in the context of critical life events. Where individuals are located on the spectrum of career change experience will depend on the balance of enabling and constraining factors across the four aspects considered, namely temporal dimensions of agency, individuals’ biographical experience, structural and cultural contexts.