Structuring forms of transition from higher education to employment: bridging Bernstein and Bourdieu in understanding mismatch

ABSTRACT

Ιn a policy context in which the harmonisation of HE curricula towards connection with the labour market is pursued, the article seeks to elucidate under-theorised and over-aggregated accounts of the role of the field of study in graduate employability and to investigate it from a new analytical angle to explain variations between fields. Using Bernstein’s theory of knowledge structures, the field of study is reconceptualised as an object in itself, shedding light on its internal relations and how these can shape graduates’ perceptions of and engagement in relevant employment. The study investigates variations within humanities and social sciences which are usually addressed by policy and scholarly research as a single category sector. The results reveal how different knowledge structures set heterogeneous conditions for graduate transitions, with explicit or implicit pathway-setting from education to work, through stronger or weaker specialisation of knowledge and identity, shaping introjected or projected identities. The study brings to light the crucial point of the intersection of a knowledge structure with a graduate’s social class by using Bourdieu’s theory. This shows how, in each field of study, specific forms of social inequality operate, affecting graduates’ transitions from HE to work in increasingly competitive and precarious labour markets.

KEYWORDS:

• Graduate employability
• knowledge structures
• social class
• Bernstein
• Bourdieu

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Cyprus, initially under the ‘Postdoctoral Research Grant’ and later by the ‘Start-Up Scheme Grant 2019-2021’.

Notes on contributors

Sophia Stavrou

Sophia Stavrou has a PhD in Sociology (Aix-Marseille Université, France). She is Lecturer in Sociology at the Department of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Cyprus (Cyprus). Her main research interests are in the areas of sociology of higher education, especially the relations between higher education and work, as well as the sociology of the curriculum, and the theory of Basil Bernstein, with an emphasis on transformations of academic knowledge. She has participated in large-scale international research programmes in the field of European educational policies, youth employment and migration in the context of the economic crisis, and internationalisation of professional education. Currently, she coordinates the programme YouthTrams ‘From Higher Education to Work: Sociology of Youth Trajectories in the Making’ funded by the Starting Grant Scheme of the University of Cyprus. Her work has been published in international scientific journals, such as International Studies in Sociology of Education, Journal of Education Policy, Revue d’Anthropologie des Connaissances, Sociologie du Travail, among others. She is the author of the monograph L’Université au diapason du Marché (L’Harmattan-Academia, 2017).