The sexuation process of young workers: The case of Şişli Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School

One of the most significant effects of neoliberalism in the field of education is that vocational high schools mostly become institutions where poor families' children study. Moreover, students who graduate from these institutions are mostly employed in precarious jobs. These results of neoliberalism are also effective in sexuation process of students in a male-dominated vocational high school where female students also study. This thesis focuses on vocational high schools, which continue to be the main institution of the reproduction of the workforce, albeit precarious employment, through Louis Althusser's concept of "Ideological Apparatus", reads power relations within schools through Michel Foucault's concept of "Disciplinary Power", and tries to explain the gender division of the students through Pierre Bourdieu's conceptualization interpreting gender as "habitus". Within this scope, this study is an ethnographic field research carried out in Şişli Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School in order to reveal the life practices and experiences of the students, using the feminist method which is a qualitative method. The data have been obtained through participant observation and in-depth interviews with semi-structured research questions. In the study, it has been concluded that female students bend their sex definitions and exhibit more egalitarian behaviors in the context of sexuation, while male students behave more rigidly about sex/gender boundaries and are more resistant to transformation in this vocational high school which has a traditional and hierarchical structure. Keywords: Sex, Gender, Sexuation, Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School, Industrial Vocational High School, Neoliberalism, Habitus, Disciplinary Power, Ideological Apparatus, Feminist Method, Ethnographic Field Research