Get lucky? Luck and educational mobility in working-class young people’s lives from age 10–21
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Documents
- Fulltext
Final published version, 1.35 MB, PDF document
Scant sociological attention has been given to the role of luck within social mobility/reproduction. This paper helps address this conceptual gap, drawing on insights from over 200 longitudinal interviews conducted with 20 working-class young people and 22 of their parents over an 11-year period, from age 10–21. We explore the potential significance of luck within the trajectories of 13 educationally mobile young people who were the first in family to go to university, six young people who achieved similar educational levels to their parents and one young person whose status was less clear cut. Our analysis suggests that particular forms of luck may be instrumental in creating opportunities for social mobility, although the consequentiality of these are mediated through interplays of agency, structure, habitus and capital. We conclude that paying further attention to luck may help augment sociological understandings of structure/agency and Bourdieusian understandings of social reproduction.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Journal | British Journal of Sociology of Education |
Volume | 44 |
Issue number | 5 |
Pages (from-to) | 843–859 |
ISSN | 0142-5692 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2023 |
Number of downloads are based on statistics from Google Scholar and www.ku.dk
No data available
ID: 347115709