The concept of habitus in migration studies. A systematic literature review

Abstract

The concept of habitus has been used to investigate a wide range of social phenomena. Pierre Bourdieu himself applied it to different fields, such as the analysis of taste and lifestyle (Bourdieu, 2000), gender relations (Bourdieu, 2001), the field of literature production (Bourdieu, 1996), the educational system and the reproduction of inequalities (Bourdieu, & Passeron, 1979), to mention a few. However, the concept of habitus has only recently been applied to investigate migration phenomena. This systematic literature review aims to investigate the use of the concept of habitus in migration theory through the analysis of 38 studies selected in two scientific databases. In the first part, after the presentation of the concept of habitus and the description of methodological selection procedure, I will make a short overview of the use of the aforementioned concept applied to migration phenomena, using the following criteria: the year of publication, national contexts, categories of migrants. Then, I will proceed to the analysis following the meta-ethnography methodology.