Precarious success and the conspiracy of reflexivity: questioning the ‘habitus transformation’ of working-class students at elite universities

ABSTRACT

Some authors argue that access to elite universities can bring about a ‘habitus transformation’ for working-class students, however in this paper, based on a three-year life history study, it is suggested that the transformative effects of the elite university experience come about in relation to and constrained by the working-class habitus. Working-class students tend to choose the strategy of ‘compartmentalising’ to manage their experience of university – engaging primarily academically and sideling the social aspects of university life. This paper offers a very complex account of such compartmentalising, in which the lack of appropriate capitals, emotional injuries, habitual dispositions and the application of instrumental rationality are fused together to make up the university experience for working-class students. The analysis demonstrates the ‘conspiracy’ of reflexivity. Reflexivity does not necessarily bring changes in and challenges to an existing habitus; rather reflexivity conspires with and tends to reinforce it. This demonstrates the continuing role of habitus in maintaining class domination in elite settings and raises questions about the effects and effectiveness of the widening participation agenda in HE.

KEYWORDS:

• ‘habitus transformation’
• reflexivity and habitus
• college experience
• working-class students at elite universities
• meritocracy
• upward social mobility

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Chinese central government introduced ‘Special University Recruitment Programmes for Rural Students’ in 2012, to require universities (the four elite universities in our study included) to allocate a recruitment quota specifically for rural students.

2. According to the Ministry of Education: http://www.cdgdc.edu.cn/xwyyjsjyxx/xwsytjxx/yxmd/274942.shtml.

3. According to http://shzw.eastday.com/shzw/G/20160403/u1ai9280455.html (An official website of Shanghai Government); we use the data in 2015 as the average salary reported by these two participants was in 2015 when we had the second interview with them.

4. We are suggesting an extension here of Bourdieu’s notion of self-exclusion (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990).

5. See the definition and meaning of suspension at https://www.compas.ox.ac.uk/event/suspension/.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Peak Discipline Construction Project of Education at East China Normal University.

Notes on contributors

Jin Jin

Jin Jin is a post-doctoral researcher at Faculty of Education, East China Normal University.

Stephen J. Ball

Stephen J. Ball is Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology of Education at UCL Institute of Education.