The double uncertainty. Trajectories and professional identityin changing contexts

People do not live in fixed, immutable contexts; neither are their life-trajectories uniform. On the contrary, people experience discontinuities, breaks and transitions at various points in their lives, including their professional lives. The fundamental requirement for a transition is a social and cultural relocation, accompanied by the challenging, reworking or abandoning of former valid identities, routines and representations of reality. The construct of transition can be usefully applied to the study of professional trajectories, by offering a perspective that takes into account the dynamicity and uncertainty imposed by the change in professional practices, not just on the activities that take place in professional contexts, but also on the definition/redefinition/negotiation of individual professional identity. This paper suggests an intrinsic ‘‘dual uncertainty’’ of both the context and the individual during the change processes of professional trajectories. The paper provides a complementary outlook to the points raised in Daniels’ (2011) article on the mutual shaping of human action and institutional settings. Taking Daniels’ approach as a basis, it is possible to broaden the analysis of professional trajectories within rapidly-changing occupational settings, by adopting a perspective that takes into account the inherent open-ended nature of socio-cultural phenomena, the fluidity of living contexts, the permeability of the boundaries within which transitions take place and trajectories evolve, as well as the impact of these aspects on professional identity and on its role in processes of change