Ungas framtidsutsikter i Kalix och Botkyrka

Habitus, mobilitet och rumsliga dominansförhållanden

Abstract

This paper examines how young people’s prospects for education and work are embedded in spatial inequalities. The analysis draws on Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts of capital and habitus, and includes interviews with young people living in two different places, in different parts of Sweden – Kalix and Botkyrka. In both places, the interviewees describe that they are pulled towards cities , and to sites of symbolic capital, such as educational institutions and heterogeneous labour markets. Moreover, the city is associated with embodied symbolic capital where people who aspire to city-life are recognized as having positive personal characteristics. The paper argues that young people relate to an urban norm in different ways depending on the composition of assets of individuals and families. The article also discusses young people’s different needs to prove themselves worthy in relation to the place they grow up in, as well as in relation to gender, class and ethnicity.