Habitus, campus experience, and graduate employment: personal advancement of middle-class students in China

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the harsh Chinese graduate labor market, urban, middle-class students continue to outpace those from rural, underprivileged backgrounds in job access and occupational attainment. Literature attributes this graduate employment gap to varied accumulation of social capital embedded in their social network, leading to advantages of middle-class. This social network-capital approach, however, rarely revealed the influences of a gradually established market system and ignored the agency of the individual job seekers. To gain a more comprehensive understanding towards this graduate employment discrepancy, this article examines the behaviors of the graduates not only in their job search processes, but also during campus experiences. Inspired by the concept habitus, this study aims to understand the cultural processes that underlie individual advancement throughout higher education, and consequently, the transition from higher education to the labor market. Drawn upon the interview data, this article found that middle-class students, compared with their underprivileged counterparts, have more sophisticated understanding towards a competitive labor market, higher level of confidence in mobilizing their agency, and apply more strategic plans towards future. This article argues that these delicately constructed middle-class disposition and behaviors guided by such disposition jointly contribute to the better performances of middle-class during job search.