Family Habitus Research Articles

Auto-Ethnography of Imagined Diasporic Lives Self-Reflexive Analysis of the Left Behind Perspective in a Migrant Family

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the imaginary about migrant kin destinations and the lives of the family members left behind. It reflects on the mechanisms of connection to places the subject has never been that knows through stories told by people whom themselves have never been but have experienced separation and loss as remaining behind in a family characterized by a history of emigration. Through self-reflexive auto-ethnography, this article focuses on the development of virtual ties to imagined places through the establishment of emotional geographies in the second generation left behind. The paper engages with the theorization of two stages in the lives of those who remain in the homeland: (In)-decision to stay, (Re)-solution to stay, which can result in Hesitation about staying in second generation left behind and eventually can lead to an Exit-action. Applying the concept of ‘familial habitus’, it demonstrates how in belonging to a family affected by displacement, stories about distant kin operate as living entities that form bonds with people, places, events with which the subject is unfamiliar. The social remittances provided through visits back can enhance the left behind exitus and emancipation opening for a potential liminoid experience of break with the limitations of patriarchal culture.

Kinship and belonging: Pacific children’s perspectives on the diaspora

Our study with 71 children aged 6-14 living in New Zealand and Samoa, provides a new child-centred perspective on transnational diasporic families. We use the Pacific concept vā to frame the study, in which children’s transnational-kinship connections reflect relational rather than physical approaches to space. Familial habitus surpasses spatial habitus as children’s primary reference point. For diasporic children, family keeps alive their sense of Pacific Island belonging. Transnational kinship ties give Pacific children additional resilience in adapting to unknown futures.

Capital gains in a digital society: Exploring how familial habitus shapes digital dispositions and outcomes in three families from Aotearoa, New Zealand

Persistent concerns about the digital divide are typically framed as a deficit of Internet access, skills or participation. Despite advances remedying first- and second-level divide issues, scholars have found that not all benefit equally from the Internet use resulting in the theorising of a third-level digital divide exploring the social determinants critical to benefit from the Internet use. Presenting analysis for three families from Aotearoa New Zealand, this work highlights the importance of the family in creating children’s digital disposition. Applying Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice concepts, we illustrate how parent’s habitus informs children’s responses to the digital world, shaping diverse forms of ‘digital capital’ which may result in ‘capital gains’ for some, and less capital benefits for others. Findings suggest that the forms of digital capital that are valued by families are closely tied to class positioning and cultural background.

Between consensus and conflict: Schools and parents negotiating the educational trajectories of students at risk of early school leaving

There is a vast amount of literature which locates the home-school relationship as a keystone to improving academic outcomes and preventing school dropouts. It is not always sufficiently clear, however, how these relationships are established and function and how they impact on students’ school engagement. This paper draws on the concepts of familial habitus and institutional habitus to better understand how home-school relationships are formed and how they are deeply class-biased. Using in-depth qualitative interviews with parents and teachers from four public secondary schools in Barcelona, this paper examines the factors explaining more and less harmonious relations between these two agents. This article will help shed light on the challenging relation between home and schools, taking into account different sociocultural contexts mediating this interaction and suggesting some implications in terms of educational policy from a social justice perspective.

Examining the Role of Family in the Development of Pre-college STEM Aspirations among Students with Disabilities

In this qualitative cross-case study, we examine the role of familial habitus in providing early access to navigational capital and opportunities predictive of STEM success. Interviews with 18 students with non-apparent disabilities at a large, four-year research university in New England showed that parents and family played a key role in multiple dimensions of student experiences with disability. We organized the findings around three themes about family: (a) family’s framing of disability and academic ability; (b) family support of STEM interests; and (c) family as STEM role models. We extend these findings to highlight the importance of family more broadly, supporting research that indicates the critical role that parental involvement plays in the development of STEM aspirations and success.

Reaching out to the hard-to-reach: mixed methods reflections of a pilot Welsh STEM engagement project

Despite years of targeted interventions, young people experiencing socio-economic deprivation are still under-represented in those studying STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects post-16 and in higher education STEM pathways. We surveyed 61 young people who had participated in the S4 programme in South Wales, UK, and interviewed three of their teachers. Using the theoretical lens of science capital, we asked them about the S4 programme, and their views of science and education in terms of aspirations, attainment, and social obstacles. Whilst widely outdated, a ‘deficit model’ of aspiration raising still guides STEM outreach policy in Wales and we consider the answers to our survey in light of this. Broadly, our participants are enthusiastic and ambitious, and confident in their abilities in both science and wider skill areas. However, we found certain aspects of ambition were linked to socio-economic status. For example, whilst most young people we surveyed aspire to go university, those who do not cite different reasons depending on their socio-economic status. Despite high aspirations around science and education, teachers cited low literacy and numeracy, household poverty, entrenched generational unemployment, rural isolation, disabilities, caring responsibilities, and teenage pregnancy as barriers to higher education for their pupils. Importantly, S4's intervention had the greatest impact with those in the extremes of socio-economic deprivation, particularly in terms of bolstering existing science and education aspirations and increasing the ‘thinkability’ of attending university. Our findings contradict accepted thinking on science and education aspirations in that rather than participation in higher education being motivated by a lack of science and education aspiration or the discourse of family habitus ("people like us"), young people seem to be starkly aware of the very real socio-economic obstacles. We found no poverty of science and education aspiration in the participants we surveyed, and encourage a policy move away from the deficit model of raising science and education aspirations that will take a more nuanced view of widening access to STEM education and higher education in general in Wales.

How working-class students choose higher education. The role of family, social networks and the institutional habitus of secondary schools

ABSTRACTBased on a qualitative study of school-to-university transition focused on working-class first-generation university students, the aim of this paper is twofold. First, it illustrates the multiple intertwining dimensions of the process of moving from school to university within an ‘open-door’ admission policy context such as the Italian one. Second, it emphasizes the role of students’ social networks and secondary school institutional habitus in differentiating how working-class students experience university decision-making. Using a Bourdieusian framework, this paper show that family habitus and cultural capital influence the decision to transition to university. However, the paper also shows that these influences are mediated by schools’ institutions according to their positions within the Italian tracking structure. In this respect, it is argued that institutional habitus constitutes a relevant heuristic to provide deeper understanding of barriers encountered by working-class students to access to university and to acknowledge the existence of important dimensions of differentiation among these students.

“It All Starts with Family”: Mechanisms of Intergenerational Poverty in the Veenkoloniën, the Netherlands

ABSTRACT Mechanisms that drive the intergenerational transmission of poverty have been studied widely, but to understand how these mechanisms are at work in real life we require studies on perspectives of families who themselves are living in poverty. In this study, we combine the perspectives of multiple generations of family households in a rural area in the Netherlands. We want to understand from their own perspective what prevents these families from escaping poverty. Twenty-three family households participated in intergenerational interviews. Results show that recurrent mechanisms were often perceived to relate to rearing practices, norm-setting and geographical mechanisms (immobility and perceived place-based stigma). Family habitus structures the mechanisms that prolong and perpetuate poverty.

Teachers’ perspectives on the delivery of transitional outreach activities and their potential to raise secondary school students’ Higher Education aspirations during the Covid-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT The role secondary schools play in raising student aspirations for, and encouraging progression into, Higher Education through supported outreach is important but often overlooked by both colleges and universities alike. This article reports on our work within Uni Connect’s ‘Raising Higher Education Aspirations’ programme in Lincolnshire which delivers targeted university-inspiring transitional outreach activities to Year 9–13 students from disadvantaged backgrounds with low levels of social and cultural capital, little or no familial habitus of Higher Education and where Higher Education participation is lower than expected. Specifically, this article considers university-inspiring transitional outreach from the perspective of six secondary school Uni Connect programme leads. Semi-structured interviews conducted with school leads over a 12-month period between October 2019 and November 2020 provided a unique insight into the successes and challenges schools face in delivering aspirational Higher Education outreach. In particular, the study found that the Uni Connect programme was beginning to have a positive effect on students, with some school leads reporting a cultural shift amongst students in their attitudes towards Higher Education. Students were reported to be more open to the possibility of going to university, more willing to explore the different pathways available to them and more prepared to take part in next steps conversations. Key to the programmes’ success was the relationship between school leads and the local partnership responsible for delivering the programme. However, continued and timely delivery of outreach, especially to Year 10 and 11 students, was viewed as the biggest challenge during the ongoing Covid-19 climate.

Violence, trafficking and drug use in public schools in Belém -Pará - Brazil

The research shows how violence, trafficking and drug use has been recurrent within schools, causing directions that are difficult to contour by Brazilian government officials. The research had a qualitative and quantitative character. The method used was interviews with teachers and the use of questionnaires with a group of one hundred and seventy students and sixteen teachers. Among all the problems, misery; the use of drugs; the arrival of adolescence; the insertion of the researched group in risk areas belonging to Perverse Territorialization; the lack of definition of a full and adequate curriculum for our social problems; the lack of adequate punishment; the influence of family habitus has contributed to the spread of violence, stimulating parallel activities with the predominance of drug trafficking and organized crime where it presents a growing approximation with the local community in need of all types of services and improvements not provided by the State, causing the increase in all crime rates, the increase in drug trafficking as well as the increase in cases of psychological disorders. Among these reasons, violence in the school environment has increased. The actions necessary to reduce school violence are pointed out in this article, knowing that for its consolidation, the support of the school community and the creation of internal codes of conduct essential to living in the school environment are necessary.

Reframing first-generation entry: how the familial habitus shapes aspirations for higher education among prospective first-generation students

ABSTRACT Despite the shift from elite to mass education, the odds of accessing university remain stacked in favour of those with a university-educated parent. Not only are first-generation students less likely to engage in higher education, but the dominant narrative surrounding their enrolment emphasises cultural deficiency, constructing individuals as ‘too different’ to succeed. Drawing on data from focus groups with 198 school-aged students in Australia, this paper reframes this narrative by using the concept of familial habitus to examine how aspirations for higher education are shaped and nurtured by the home lives of prospective first-generation entrants. We develop three characterisations of familial habitus – ‘projected’, ‘meritocratic’, and ‘supportive’ – each of which demonstrates the inventive and transformative power of habitus. Cautioning against pathologising accounts of first-generation entry, we argue that the social justice motives of widening participation will be thwarted unless first-generation students are repositioned as legitimate participants in higher education.

The Development and Validation of a Measure of Science Capital, Habitus, and Future Science Interests

There is growing evidence that science capital (science-related forms of social and cultural capital) and family habitus (dispositions for science) influence STEM career decisions by youth. This study presents reliability and validity evidence for a survey of factors that influence career aspirations in science. Psychometric properties of the NextGen Scientist Survey were evaluated with 889 youth in grades 6–8. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) found four factors (Science Expectancy Value, Science Experiences, Future Science Task Value, and Family Science Achievement Values). Using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), four separate factor models were tested. The CFA affirmed that the four-factor solution extracted during the EFA was the best-fitting model. The analyses also found acceptable internal consistency for each of the four factors. The results validate the use of the NextGen Scientist Survey for measuring science capital for middle school youth.

OS CAPITAIS BOURDIEUSIANOS E SUAS INFLUÊNCIAS NO ENSINO E NA APRENDIZAGEM DOS ALUNOS DE MATEMÁTICA

The research work is theoretically structured in the Bourdieusian concepts, specifically on the work The writings of Education. In this sense, the discussion is based on a hermeneutical incursion into Bourdieu's work in order to investigate whether cultural capital influences the performance of students in basic education, especially in Mathematics. Thereunto, through qualitative research supported by quantitative data and collected from questions answered firstly by students of High School, and with Elementary School secondly, especially in the Mathematics subject in a countryside town in Parana, it intends to verify if the concepts by Bourdieu, above all of habitus, are still determinants for teaching and learning process in the formal spaces of education. Therefore, from the data collected through these questionnaires, the relationship between the capitals of the family habitus and the performance of the Mathematics subject is presented under the light of the concepts by Bourdieu.

Cultural capital, habitus and reading futures: middle-class adolescent students’ cultivation of reading dispositions in Singapore

The acquisition of cultural capital can only be understood in the light of the formation of habitus, including the socialisation process, and in the context of the field in which any such capital has value. Yet, the relation between cultural capital and habitus is seldom discussed in research. Drawing on the data from focus groups with 96 students and a survey of 5,779 students from six Singapore secondary schools, we analyze how reading as a form of cultural capital is distributed among High-SES, Mid-SES and Low-SES students in Singapore. We show how middle-class practices of intensive immersion in school-valued reading practices is a form of habitus that prepare some students better than others for engaged reading. The findings highlight how reading as a form of cultural capital is operationalized through students’ familial habitus and argues that making visible familial habitus provides insights for transforming institutional habitus for students’ reading futures.

Exploring the intergenerational responsibility of musical mothering and morality

Abstract This article investigates the connection between musical mothering and morality, where involvement in musical practices provides middle-class women opportunities to validate their mothering. Previous studies of intensive mothering and concerted cultivation indicate struggles with competitiveness, perfectionism and anxiety. However, there is a scarcity of research that looks closely at the diversity of women’s experiences of mothering, particularly through the lens of music as a social practice. This intergenerational sociological study of Australian women applies Bourdieusian and feminist theory to expand music education research by analysing the intersection of music, motherhood, gender, class and generation. This article explores excerpts from the musical life stories of three mother–daughter relationships and the ways in which they produce musical children and maintain musical selves. The findings highlight the diversity within middle-class motherhood and the differing ways in which the field of mothering, family habitus and music are negotiated to construct musical and mothering subjectivities.

GENDER CONSTRUCTION IN SPORTS, FAMILY HABITUS AND “GENDER REGIME”

This article is based on data collected during a qualitative survey on children's leisure practices and family socialisation patterns. The paper focuses more specifically on the cross effects of gender and social class on the construction of body hexis and relationship to sports. The results show that several dimensions of family habitus must be taken into account: lifestyles, way in which parents divide the tasks of raising children and relationship they have with social competition or gender norms. Moreover, taking these different dimensions into account must be accompanied by an analysis of the concrete modes of socialization within the family and the practice context.

Killing pigs and talking to nonna: “wog” versus “cosmopolitan” Italianitá among second-generation Italian-Australians and the role of family

ABSTRACT This paper extends the literature on second-generation migrants by examining the construction of ethnicity (Italianitá) over time. We compare two cohorts of second-generation Italian-Australians: the post-World War II cohort and the post-1980s cohort. Ethnographic data for this research were collected with second-generation Italian-Australians in Perth over a thirty-year period. Our findings highlight important differences between these two groups based on socio-historical context and transnational experiences. Informants draw on these differences to distinguish between “wog” vs. “cosmopolitan” forms of Italianitá. While these contrasting identities highlight cultural discontinuities between cohorts, both groups construct their ethnicity through the trope of the Italian migrant family. Employing the theoretical notions of “intimate culture” and “familial habitus” we theorize family as integral to conceptualizations of ethnic field and show how it has been overlooked and devalued in analyses of diaspora politics and identity.

Why do students enrol for postgraduate education in China? The influence of gender and of family habitus

ABSTRACTThe article draws upon Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and cultural capital to provide an in-depth analysis of the gender differences in students’ motivation for undertaking postgraduate (PG) education in Mainland China. It reports an in-depth case study comprising 381 questionnaires and 30 semi-structured interviews. The quantitative data show that students who enter PG education do so chiefly to improve employment prospects. The qualitative data, while supporting the quantitative results, show students’ motives were also gender-differentiated and how they interact with students’ family habitus.

Mapping the role of ‘transnational family habitus’ in the lives of young people and children

AbstractIn this article, we develop the concept of ‘transnational family habitus’ as a theoretical tool for making sense of the ways in which children and young people from a migrant background are ‘doing families’ transnationally. Drawing on over a decade of cumulative research on Caribbean and Italian families in the UK, as well as on a new joint research project, we first investigate the opportunities and consequences of a transnational family habitus on family arrangements, kinship relationships and identity within a transnational context. Second, we analyse the role of these young people's structural location in Britain in shaping the boundaries of their transnational family habitus. We argue that one should see a transnational family habitus as an asset that can potentially disrupt conventional understandings of belonging and processes of inclusion and exclusion. However, we also detail how social divisions of class, race, and increasingly migration status, shape such a habitus.

Leaving Family to Return to Family: Roots Migration Among Second‐Generation Italian‐Australians

AbstractThis article examines “roots migration” (visits and repatriations) of second‐generation Italian‐Australians to their ancestral homeland. Despite the current economic climate, these young adults have moved to Italy, hence their motivation for migration goes beyond economic drivers and is best explained by psychosocial factors. Drawing on ethnographic analysis, our aim is to highlight the importance of the dimension of the family, which has tended to be implicitly rather than explicitly studied, within the transnational social field and imaginary. Family is a somewhat contradictory factor that generates ties to the ancestral homeland, leading us to apply a psychosocial approach comprising an analysis of affective and relational dimensions through the lens offamilial habitus. Our findings highlight how family is the major motivation for roots migration involving an interconnected process of moving away from (the migrant) family and of moving to (the homeland) family as a culturally appropriate way of gaining independence.