Identity matters: the centrality of ‘conferred identity’ as symbolic power and social capital in higher education mobility

Abstract

Although any ‘choice’ young people make about higher education incorporates a subtle interplay of individual agency, circumstance and social structure, the centrality of identity in such life choices for rural young people cannot be underestimated. Since mobility is an ontological absolute for most rural young people accessing university, it is essential to understand better how identity, choice, agency and social structure work together as social capital. In a 4-year study of young rural women from small towns in Australia who move to an elite city university, I found that ‘deciding’ to access university education involved a complex amalgam of imbricating factors, but all involved a strong identity construct as ‘one who would move’. Bourdieu's concept of symbolic power is re-appropriated and utilised here to explain the evidence of what I call in this paper a ‘conferred identity’ – symbolic power conferred onto the young women over time that works to enable and propel their mobility.