This study explores language regarding career and career development in European policy documents on career guidance in order to disclose underlying view(s) of these phenomena conveyed in the texts. Qualitative content analysis was used to approach the subject in the texts, followed by a sender-oriented interpretation. Sources for interpretation include several sociological and pedagogical approaches based upon social constructionism. These provide a framework for understanding how different views of career phenomena arise. The characterization of career phenomena in the documents falls into four categories: contextual change, environment-person correspondence, competence mobility, and empowerment. An economic perspective on career dominates, followed by learning and political science perspectives. Policy formulations convey contradictory messages and a form of career 'contract' that appears to subordinate individuals' careers to global capitalism, while attributing sole responsibility for career to individuals.

This paper explores the essential understanding and underlying perspectives of career implicit in EU career guidance policy in the twenty-first century, as well as the possible implications of these for the future mission of guidance. Career theories, models and concepts that serve career guidance are shaped on the twentieth-century industrial division of labour and now face a crisis due to the influence of globalization on working life. The transition to a knowledge-based society also challenges the traditional view of career: vocational and educational paths are no longer linear, predictable or stable. The analyses of EU policy documents and ethical declarations discussed here indicate that meanings of career are under reconstruction and that these documents fail to clarify the underlying meanings or perspectives on career contained therein. The essential meaning of career, as communicated through characterizations and dominating underlying perspectives in EU policy, puts greater emphasis on career guidance as being conducted on behalf of society, rather than the individual. Ethical tensions within the career guidance profession appear to have increased, and the profession is also challenged in its professionalization by contradictions and broadened areas, activities and functions.

Various issues surrounding career are part of people's everyday lives, so people have a kind of common sense knowledge of career. Although the meaning of ‘career’ is often taken for granted, mixed messages and the lack of a conceptual definition blur our understanding of career, especially in times of societal and contextual change. Social representation theory (SRT) responds well to the theoretical and methodological needs of this study, which explores social representations of career among a group of people in a context of changing working life conditions. Free association was the method used for collecting the empirical data for this study. The content of social representations is inductively and thematically explored to then disclose within which scientifically shaped thoughts on career the empirical findings are reflected and seems to be anchored, and how these representations relate to thoughts currently dominating on the structural level in today’s changing society. The exploration resulted in two stable and two more dynamic social representations concerning career: career as individual project and self-realization; career as social/hierarchical climbing; career as a game of exchange; and career as an uncertain outcome. The respondents’ common sense knowledge of career appears to be reflected and anchored in past working life conditions and in scientific perspectives that no longer correspond to those now dominating at the structural level. This indicates a discrepancy between that which is socially represented among people and that which is communicated within the new conditions of working life.

This exploration of guidance counsellors’ social representations of their mission and of career generates two pairs of opposing social representations. The first pair—impartial educational support on behalf of the individual and a practice of matching on behalf of the business sector—concerns their mission. Constitutive elements of these refer to their professional identity and, in contrast, to surrounding actors’ misinterpretation of their mission. The second pair—the common view of career as something bad and career in the context of guidance as something other the common view—concerns career. Guidance counsellors express an uneasy relationship to career and implicitly view it as internal personal growth.