Inequality and 21-year-olds' negotiation of uncertain transitions to employment: a Bourdieusian approach

Abstract

Faced with uncertainty, how do young people navigate the transition from school to work? Applying Bourdieu's concept of habitus to the ‘fields’ of education and employment, I argue that past experience, family background and unequal access to economic, social and symbolic forms of capital differentiate their transitions. Drawing on the tenth wave of the Australian longitudinal Life Chances Study, we found that all of the twenty-five 21-year-olds interviewed expressed uncertainty when discussing their futures. However, those from high-income backgrounds with access to strong social, economic and cultural resources were better able to manage the risks arising from uncertainty than their counterparts from low-income backgrounds. The following article seeks to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of young people's experiences at age 21 through the application of Bourdieu's conceptual framework. The interviewees’ habitus and cultivation of varying forms of capital tend towards social reproduction, yet also reveal opportunities for those considered ‘disadvantaged’ to mobilise their cultural resources. Bourdieu's model of the field, and its component conceptual tools, provide an explanatory frame to make sense of the seemingly incoherent paths that young people trace between education and employment.

Keywords:

• youth
• longitudinal
• Bourdieu
• capital
• habitus
• disadvantage
• inequality

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Janet Taylor and Dina Bowman for their feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. We focus on family income in this paper as an important, but not the only, indicator of socio-economic status and access to resources. The definition of family income categories is given in Taylor, Borlagdan, and Allan (2012, 69). While family income is a key variable that has been used throughout the Life Chances Study, the complexity of intersecting factors in the lives of the young people demonstrates that socio-economic status and disadvantage are multidimensional in nature.

2. This brief description of the analysis belies the complexity in distinguishing categories from themes. More than the recurring discursive patterns, the research team was also guided by the techniques for theme identification outlined in Ryan and Bernard (2003).

Additional information

Funding

Funding: This work was supported by the Prue Myer Fund.