Horizons of the Possible: Agency and Reflexivity in Narratives about the Future among College Students in Norilsk

Abstract

The article aims at identifying modes of constructing imagined futures among students at technical colleges in Norilsk and to examine how these modes combine reflexivity and agency within the local opportunity structure of an Arctic single-industry city. Spatial isolation and the dominance of the city-forming enterprise raise the stakes of biographical decisions and institutionally structure educational and employment trajectories. The empirical material consists of 31 semi-structured interviews with students from two colleges in Norilsk, conducted in September 2024. The analysis employs thematic coding, focusing on agentic moments and forms of reflexive engagement with constraints. The study identifies four modes of constructing imagined futures, namely: “following the well-trodden path,” characterized by the reproduction of a taken-for-granted trajectory and the delegation of decision-making; “a safety choice” involving the instrumental appropriation of an institutionally supported pathway; “negotiations” involving the coordination of local resources, timeframes, and conditions for an earlier relocation; and “two futures,” characterized by the maintenance of parallel scenarios and the limited translation of desired futures into a sequence of concrete steps. The findings demonstrate that the reflexive differentiation of alternatives does not necessarily coincide with the agentic organization of action. The most elaborate differentiation of alternatives is found among respondents whose desired futures are less clearly translated into action, whereas the most practically organized trajectories reproduce the established local pathway without questioning it. This divergence is explained by the asymmetrical distribution of navigational resources within the single-industry city: employment contracts, job placement, practical training, and years of service in the North provide a well-developed institutional infrastructure for one trajectory, while alternatives beyond it lack comparable forms of support. Moving beyond the established local trajectory is possible when additional resources external to the local field are available, enabling young people to connect their desired futures to a sequence of feasible steps. The author concludes that the local opportunity structure shapes not only which futures young people can imagine but also which of these futures they can actively appropriate through their own agency. The divergence between reflexivity and agency should therefore be understood as a structurally reproduced configuration of youth transitions in contexts characterized by the “compressed possible.” The findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of how local institutional pathways and access to navigational resources shape horizons of aspiration and strategies of youth (im)mobility in Arctic single-industry cities.

Acknowledgments. This article is an output of a research project (HSE-BR-2025-008) implemented as part of the Basic Research Program at HSE University.