Growing up in Russia's Largest Arctic City: Educational Strategies in an Industrial Monotown
The HSE Institute of Education is conducting a research project dedicated to 'The Contribution of Education to the Development of Human Capital in the Far East and the Arctic'. The project examines how general, secondary, and vocational education systems contribute to the preservation and development of human capital in these strategically important regions.
As part of this initiative, Ekaterina Pavlenko and Daria Tolstykh from the Centre for Vocational Education and Skills Development have been exploring the development of human capital in the Russian Arctic. Their work combines field research, analytical publications, and active engagement with regional contexts, making a significant contribution to the project's broader objectives.
Their current research focuses on secondary vocational education in Norilsk, an Arctic industrial monotown. The scholars analyse how geographical isolation, a single-industry economy, and locally shared narratives influence young people's educational choices.
A key finding of their work is that growing up in an Arctic industrial monotown is not simply a matter of adapting to limitations, but rather a creative endeavour to navigate between stability and the possibility of change.
To gain insight into this specific context, we asked Ekaterina and Daria a series of questions about their research.
From an educational research perspective, what makes Norilsk's landscape unique for youth? How does the monotown structure specifically shape the educational choices available to young people compared to other Russian regions?
Being isolated in terms of transport, Norilsk has a very narrow school-to-work pipeline. While in most Russian regions youth aim to move to bigger cities to study, if they are not living in one already, for average Norilsk youth moving for education is much harder, especially taking into account the perceived distances and not only those in kilometers and rubles. There are basically two main pathways which are closely connected with family economic resources. You can have very high achievements with support from personal tutors and then go to a university in another region, if your parents have the means to provide that. In most cases, however, they cannot, therefore, most of the local school students go to local VET schools.
Norilsk itself, although it is a central and biggest city in the region, is not a large city itself. It doesn’t have many options in terms of labor market, especially given that there is one major enterprise overtaking most of the city’s economy. Thinking about the future career is heavily shaped by these circumstances.
During your field expedition to Norilsk in 2024, you conducted 65 in-depth interviews with secondary vocational education students. What central themes and patterns emerged from this material? In what ways did these findings refine, complicate or reshape your original theoretical framework?
Mostly we focused on how local youth establish themselves as agentic despite severe structural limitations. During the interviews we asked them how and why they made the choices they made, how they perceive life in Norilsk and in other places. From that, we elucidated the specific role culture plays in the process of choice-making and agency manifestation.
From the start, we didn’t have a strict theoretical framework, following more of an abductive methodological approach. Of course, we had some core authors and works we relied upon, but we also tried to stay open to whatever empirical material can show. Our core question was quite broad—how culture (understood in terms of cultural anthropology and cultural sociology) shapes youth agency and choices, but in the end we ended up working specifically with narratives about the future and looked at how education, career, and self are rearranged within them in such a way as to make sense to local youth.
Are there differences in how young men and young women in Norilsk choose their educational path and approach future mobility?
There definitely are differences, which we can see in the number of boys and girls enrolled in technical vs. medical and teaching colleges. But it wasn’t our main focus as of yet.
A key message of your work is that growing up in an Arctic monotown involves creative navigation, not just adaptation to limitations. How does a student strategically balance the desire for stability with the hope for change?
Growing up in any circumstances is very much a creative, meaning-making project. Norilsk is peculiar via heavy structural limitations that the local education system and labour market have. Our main observation is that Norilsk youth establish two timelines for themselves—local future and possible future outside of Norilsk. Both of these futures are important, both of them are in the realm of possible and desirable, while for most of the youth in other Russian regions it’s either/or. Having both futures somewhat open for themselves, youth in Norilsk maintain both stability and hope for a change.
To what extent do parents' experiences in Norilsk shape their children's educational and mobility plans?
We didn’t talk with parents, so we can’t properly analyze the effect of their actions and perceptions, but from the interviews with youth we can’t say that there are any major differences from interviews with youth in other regions.
How do the strategies identified in Norilsk compare with those observed in other Arctic or remote industrial cities in Russia? Does the Norilsk case reveal the broader structural dynamics of youth transitions in the Arctic, or is it a context-specific example?
This will be clearer when we conduct more research in other Arctic cities. But generally, cities in the Arctic are very different between themselves. The Arctic zone specifically is designated not by settlements or cultures, it’s an administrative division, so we can’t say that there is anything in common between Arctic cities to begin with (see the works of Nadezhda Zamyatina, north urban scholar). But because these conditions are very specific and peculiar, we can see how basic social processes unfold in greater detail. And, of course, gain insight into transition to adulthood among local youth.
What further research is needed to improve our understanding of young people’s educational and life trajectories across the Arctic region? How will you develop this research agenda further in your projects?
We still have a lot to learn. First of all, we’re looking forward to more fieldwork in other Arctic regions, especially with youth in VET, because it’s a very important local human capital. We don’t know nearly enough about the specifics of local educational systems and labour markets, local cultural structures, narratives and self-perception.