'It's either Maccas or uni': A Bourdieusian analysis of working-class youth in New Zealand

<p>School to work transitions is often presented as a binary choice. You either pursue a university education that is framed as a sure-fire pathway to both social and economic mobility, or you pursue a ‘lesser’ form of industrial and vocational training, with little of hope of advancement. However, this thesis argues that this assumption must be contested, as it obscures the complexity of all school to work transitions and the potential for social mobility in these ‘lesser’ forms of education. Through interviews with young men and women who are training as an apprentice or have recently completed their apprenticeship, this thesis hopes to provide a more complex snapshot of school to work transitions, focusing on how apprentices find and adapt to their new trade. My overall argument centres on Bourdieu’s theory of practice which is often discussed concerning the specific class-based outcomes of education for students from different class conditions (Bourdieu 1977). While this approach is useful to showing the complexity of school to work transitions from supposedly ‘lesser’ pathways, this approach is overly reliant on habitus, presenting a type of individual agency that is primarily reproductive and non-conducive to any potential transformation. Instead of focusing on just habitus in understanding this transition, a greater emphasis is placed on Bourdieu’s concept of ‘field’. Specifically, how field conditions can influence both the degree and the type of agency within a field, presenting a more complicated conception of agency that can be simultaneously reproductive and transformative.</p>

'It's either Maccas or uni': A Bourdieusian analysis of working-class youth in New Zealand

<p>School to work transitions is often presented as a binary choice. You either pursue a university education that is framed as a sure-fire pathway to both social and economic mobility, or you pursue a ‘lesser’ form of industrial and vocational training, with little of hope of advancement. However, this thesis argues that this assumption must be contested, as it obscures the complexity of all school to work transitions and the potential for social mobility in these ‘lesser’ forms of education. Through interviews with young men and women who are training as an apprentice or have recently completed their apprenticeship, this thesis hopes to provide a more complex snapshot of school to work transitions, focusing on how apprentices find and adapt to their new trade. My overall argument centres on Bourdieu’s theory of practice which is often discussed concerning the specific class-based outcomes of education for students from different class conditions (Bourdieu 1977). While this approach is useful to showing the complexity of school to work transitions from supposedly ‘lesser’ pathways, this approach is overly reliant on habitus, presenting a type of individual agency that is primarily reproductive and non-conducive to any potential transformation. Instead of focusing on just habitus in understanding this transition, a greater emphasis is placed on Bourdieu’s concept of ‘field’. Specifically, how field conditions can influence both the degree and the type of agency within a field, presenting a more complicated conception of agency that can be simultaneously reproductive and transformative.</p>

Jugendfreiwilligendienste als ›Orte‹ der Selbstoptimierung?

Youth Volunteer Services as ›Places‹ of Self-Optimization? Considerations on Biographical Narratives in the Transition after School The article is concerned with self-optimization from a biographical perspective. The focus is on the ›biographisation‹ of life and the ›optimization promise‹, made by educational institutions in school to work transitions. By drawing on life stories of participants in the Voluntary Social Year [Freiwilliges Soziales Jahr], it can be shown how norms of self-optimisation are translated by ›biographisation‹ and how educational biographies are thus produced.

Unraveling the Complex Relationship Between Work Transitions and Self-Esteem and Life Satisfaction

Transitions in and out of work are common experiences with major repercussions for people’s lives. The complex link between work transitions and psychological adjustment is not well understood, however. In this preregistered study, we analyzed 11 waves of longitudinal data from 13,671 participants (representative of the Dutch population) to examine the transactional effects between repeated work transitions (employment and unemployment) and psychological adjustment (self-esteem and life satisfaction). Specifically, we investigated change trajectories before and after the transitions and tested whether moderator variables predicted individual differences in change. Participants with lower levels of self-esteem and life satisfaction were more likely to experience unemployment and less likely to experience employment transitions, indicating selection effects. Participants decreased in their self-esteem and life satisfaction before the beginning of the unemployment transition, indicating anticipatory socialization effects. These effects did not differ for multiple experiences of the same transition. Participants showed larger increases in life satisfaction in response to employment transitions when they experienced higher levels of job satisfaction. Participants showed larger decreases in self-esteem before unemployment transitions when they experienced a longer duration of unemployment. Our findings point to bidirectional effects between work transitions and self-esteem and life satisfaction, which is consistent with transactional theories. They also highlight the importance of the timing of changes before and after work transitions, the dynamic nature of the transition-adjustment link, and the existence of individual differences in psychological adjustment to work transitions that were linked to characteristics of the corresponding transition.