Abstract
The objective of this paper is to report a study carried out at three Brazilian universities addressing only production engineering undergraduate courses. We sought to locate agents that had the same professional education to identify their different social positions, struggles, and disputes. The reason is based on the hypothesis that the students enrolled in the same university course, such as a prestigious engineering university course, are marked by different trajectories that may depend on symbolic capitals (cultural and economic) and the social origin and life trajectory of these students and of future graduates.Keywords: economic sociology, Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology, social reproduction, occupation and education.
Highlights
The purpose of this article is to search through the theoretical inspiration of Pierre Bourdieu, to test his central hypothesis described in the author’s works regarding the dynamics between the diploma obtained in a graduation and the position occupied after the end of the undergraduate studies
The degree of social fluidity within the different social classes of these agents, ranging from low-wage workers to elite, was shown. Such fluidity will be discussed later using the methodological tool prosopographical analysis, by carrying out a multiple correspondence analysis (MCA), a statistical technique widely used by Pierre Bourdieu in his studies to show how these agents locate their struggles in social spaces. This analysis will be used to study the trajectories of incoming students and students who graduated from two prestigious Brazilian public higher education institutions, Universidade Politécnica de São Paulo (Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo, USP) and Universidade Federal de São Carlos (Federal University of São Carlos, UFSCar), which is located in São Carlos, state of São Paulo, Brazil
The present study deepens the understanding with the statement that holding a cultural capital is not enough to occupy certain positions in the labor market; the volume of capital and the specific type of cultural capital held are other important determining factors
Summary
The purpose of this article is to search through the theoretical inspiration of Pierre Bourdieu, to test his central hypothesis described in the author’s works regarding the dynamics between the diploma obtained in a graduation and the position occupied after the end of the undergraduate studies. The degree of social fluidity within the different social classes of these agents, ranging from low-wage workers to elite, was shown Such fluidity will be discussed later using the methodological tool prosopographical analysis, by carrying out a multiple correspondence analysis (MCA), a statistical technique widely used by Pierre Bourdieu in his studies to show how these agents locate their struggles in social spaces. Based on the position that the engineers occupied in the space at a given moment in time, it was possible to examine their status movement and to investigate how the changes due to the acquired capital and their different positions determine the degree of social fluidity and the distribution of these individuals across class locations; some were upper class, others were middle class, and some were working class within the production engineering social space in Brazil
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