Social class,the elite hockey player career and educational paths

The socio-economic determinants of schooling

The lack of a diploma constitutes a serious risk for individuals (Janosz et al., 2000). Currently, in Switzerland, 85% to 90% of students who have completed their compulsory education make the effort to obtain an additional diploma before the age of 25 (Meyer, 2009). ¹ Similar to elsewhere, in Switzerland, unemployment does not affect all social groups equally: the unemployment rate remains higher among the young (15–24 years), women and those with low qualifications (OFS, 2011).

The literature on school dropout shows that, taking a social class perspective, socio-economic determinants seem first to affect youth from disadvantaged backgrounds. In Switzerland, studies show that the transition to post-compulsory education is strongly determined by social origins and the migratory factor (Sacchi et al., 2011; Scharenberg et al., 2014). The low cultural capital of parents (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990), a lack of parental guidance and investment, poor school results and feelings of low competence as well as coming from a family with numerous children or a single-parent family are important factors for dropout (Rumberger, 1995). The findings suggest that dropout partly depends on families’ attitudes, combined with social class and other variables such as conflicts within families (Marcotte et al., 2001).

Sport participation and schooling

Sport participation can also be a variable that influences schooling. McNeal (1995) shows that students’ participation in sports in secondary schools significantly reduces the dropout rates for all population categories, regardless of gender, race or scholastic aptitude. Ream and Rumberger (2008) and McNeal (1995) show a positive impact of sport engagement on commitment to school curricula. The results are confirmed by Conzelmann and Nagel (2003), who also show that athletes occupy higher professional positions. However, other researchers observe that a ‘strong athletic identity’ can negatively influence schooling and is the first predictor of athletes’ transitions (Park et al., 2013). Furthermore, the low cultural capital in families and the symbolic sanctions of the school institution feed into a ‘negative vocation’ for the school career, thus reinforcing a focus on the sport career (Lefèvre, 2010). In addition, there seems to be a diminishing return for extremely high levels of extracurricular school activities because of the time, mental energy, resources, etc. involved, which could have been devoted to education (Marsh and Kleitman, 2002). These results might be perceived as contradictory. However, they are not because engaging in sport is not an accurate measure/representation of the diversity of the uses of sport. The favourable impact of ‘ordinary’ sport engagement on school curricula contrasts with elite athletes’ engagement: for them, the tension between education and sport is often considerable, as is the case for Swiss hockey.

The attractiveness of ice hockey in Switzerland

Hockey has an important and special place in Switzerland. Hockey is much more popular in Switzerland than in the surrounding countries: the highest level of the Swiss championship National League A (NLA) is the most-attended league in Europe, with approximately 7000 people for each match in 2018. However, compared to the National Hockey League (NHL) (approximately 17,000) it is low, but very high given that Switzerland is a small country of eight million inhabitants. Hockey in Switzerland may not have the key role it plays in shaping Canadian national identity (Robidoux and Trudel, 2006; Whitson and Gruneau, 2006) or be considered a religion (Bauer, 2011). While there is no literature on the centrality of hockey to Swiss society, there is a range of evidence that makes it possible to view hockey as an important resource in Switzerland for the affirmation of identities. Hockey is a very popular sport; it obtains newspaper coverage similar to that of football (respectively, 20% and 22%, 9% for skiing, 8% for tennis) (Schoch, 2011). As football, hockey is perceived as the most prestigious responsibility for the professional identity of sports journalists (Schoch, 2013). A total of 98% of hockey players are male; hockey is the sport with the widest representation of men and less than 10% of players are foreign (Lamprecht et al., 2014); in comparison, more than 60% of the football players playing in Switzerland are of foreign origin. Furthermore, in contrast to football, the Swiss Hockey League limits the number of foreign players (two foreign players are authorized to play in the National League B (NLB, the second highest level) and four in the NLA). ² However, although 16% of the players in the first league are migrant players and despite being attractive to higher-quality migrant players (Maguire, 1999), with some of them coming from northern countries, hockey is perceived by the Swiss president, Ueli Maurer, as an exclusively Swiss sport: ‘migration benefits sport, certainly. This is the case for football but not at all for ice hockey. Switzerland does not have immigrants from Nordic countries’ (La Côte, 2014). We may also note that the social recruitment of elite hockey players in Switzerland has become more elitist over the last 30 years (Moret, 2017), as is the case in Canada, where elite hockey is quickly becoming out of reach for the working class (Pecoskie, 2016). Ice hockey is one of the most ‘typical’ and valuable cultural practices of young white Swiss males. It can therefore provide a strong sport capital that can, under some conditions, be converted into economic and social capital.

The hockey career and schooling in tension

Although the celebration of hockey players attaches an important symbolic value to such a career, professional success in hockey is rare (Poupart, 1999), even in the most important markets for hockey players. In addition, when they are achieved, careers are precarious (Robidoux, 2001). In Switzerland, some parents support an exclusive hockey career, but others are more cautious. They may be more concerned with schooling because, compared to other countries (Radtke and Coalter, 2007), educational support for young elite athletes is very limited in Switzerland. In contrast to Canada, hockey was an amateur sport in Switzerland until the early 1980s. Since then, the Swiss hockey market has increased ³ and is now more global, as is the case in Canada (Genest, 1994) and for a wide range of professional sport leagues (Maguire, 1996): for junior players, a professional career is valorized, and the top such career is to play in the NHL. ⁴ Becoming a professional athlete was fourth in a ranking of jobs aspired to by young Swiss, particularly boys, however professional sport was estimated as comprising less than 2000 jobs in 2011, less than 0.05% of all jobs (basis for calculations, OFS, 2011). The objective chances of becoming a professional athlete are thus modest, which means that a career in hockey is often in tension with schooling and can induce some junior players to ‘disengage’. Naturally, however, education is not the sole path for a successful transition from a sporting career to a professional career: Baltisberger and Nagel (2016) show that former ice hockey players have higher professional positions than their brothers, despite having the same level of school education.

The symbolic violence of reproduction

Despite Bourdieu’s wish to overcome the false oppositions between structure and agency and between objectivism and subjectivism, the interplay among habitus, field and capital is sometimes used in a mechanical manner, leaving the impression of a dominantly structural analysis of social class reproduction that ignores the complexity of social processes. Although reproduction and the inheritance of cultural capital are key outcomes when studying education, Bourdieu’s main focus is on social struggles and how they contribute to both reproduction and transformation. Drawing on the sociology of Max Weber, he extended Marx’s analysis of struggle. Domination cannot be explained merely by economic capital; thus, he identifies two other principal forms: cultural capital and social capital (Bourdieu, 1986). Cultural capital itself has three types, but in this paper, we refer to only the institutionalized form of cultural capital provided by school (Bourdieu, 1986). Bourdieu shows that social domination works together with beliefs and the symbolic organization of society. Education and cultural practices contribute to social domination and participate in the reproduction of the entire social system (Bourdieu, 1984; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990). The subtitle of Bourdieu and Passeron’s (1990) book is ‘foundations of a theory of symbolic violence’ because they observe that there is an amnesia of the genesis of social processes. They show how middle- and upper-class families maintain their social positions in society through education. Thus, claiming that school or sport is available to all and that success and failure are related to individual will or character is a symbolic violence that hides the social dimensions of these processes.

Habitus and field

Through their socialization, athletes internalize ‘schemes of perception, thought and action’ (Bourdieu, 1989: 14) that are constitutive of what Bourdieu calls habitus as ‘a set of basic, deeply internalized master-patterns (dispositions) which may govern and regulate mental processes without being consciously apprehended and controlled’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 190-91). A key component of habitus is ethos, which designates ‘an objectively systematic set of dispositions with an ethical dimension, a set of practical principles…’ (Bourdieu, 1994: 86). There is a sporting competitive ethos that expresses the athlete’s fundamental values; it is shaped by the belief that the game is worth playing, even if the athlete risks sacrificing his or her health, education or other career opportunities. Ethos is a ‘morality made flesh’ (Bourdieu, 1993: 86) that guides ‘the logic of practice’ through a permanent disposition (Bourdieu, 1977) to engage the body, train, fight and suffer for the game.

However, to understand perception, thought and actions, Bourdieu suggests replacing them in the specific fields, part of the social structures, in which social classes interact (Bourdieu, 1989). Habitus helps us understand positions in the field, both objectively and subjectively. People with similar social positions and experiences may share dispositions, inscribed in the body, that drive them to share similar social practices and judgements that explain the logic of taste (Bourdieu, 1984).

Forms of capital and the sporting field

There are different forms of capital linked to sport participation: social capital, which can provide trust and social links (Seippel, 2006); cultural capital, which expresses the struggles between classes in the field of sport (Stempel, 2005); and bodily capital, which is held by athletes through the accumulation of their labour (Wacquant, 1995).

In the sporting field, value is constituted by sporting performance, measured by victories and rankings, which can be identified as sport capital. Even if bodily capital is mandatory to produce top-level performance, the value of performance depends on its symbolic recognition. Having a high ranking, scoring or beating a record provides symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1986) that can vary considerably in value: regardless of their respective bodily capital; in Switzerland, the performances of ice hockey players are more recognized than those of most other athletes. The conversion of sport capital into social or economic capital is very different from one sport to another, and in the same sport. Bodily capital is broadly shared, but sport capital is concentrated at the top level. As a consequence, few ice hockey players, at least in Switzerland, can convert their sport capital into a high income based on broad recognition outside the sporting field in the media, economic or political fields, and few can make a sustainable living from this economy of celebrity.

Cultural capital through education and symbolic capital through sport may be used simultaneously as two social resources to obtain an income and upward social mobility and to facilitate transitions. However, in some cases, a strong belief in sport drives athletes to disengage from education. Athletes often fight to obtain sport capital. Some of them put their health at risk and even dope; others simply lower the importance of other social activities, including education. In our research, we argue that the grip of both physical and mental work on hockey players shapes their ethos and lays the foundation for an almost complete engagement in sport. The role of parents may be crucial because their ‘commitment to their children’s sport participation is grounded in an emerging family habitus’ (Coakley, 2006: 154). As people’s social positions and resources strongly influence positions in fields, participation in a field and the experience related to it shape dispositions that can reinforce or weaken the tie to a social position. In contrast to an excessively deterministic use of Bourdieu’s analysis, dispositions are malleable and can evolve under the influence of the various experiences and struggles in diverse social fields. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how field, habitus and capital interplay. Although the cultural capital of families is the main factor that explains successful schooling, the reproduction of cultural capital is not mechanical (Lahire, 1995), and differences in family attitudes can play an important role. Thus, we assume that adhering to the doxa of the sporting field exerts a strong influence on and interacts with the position occupied, or the perception of it, in the field of education. This assumption explains why we pay attention to how young hockey players experience the relations between their sporting career and schooling.

Our hypothesis is that social position, identified by cultural and economic capital, can explain how educational and sport pathways combine or are perceived as being mutually exclusive. We expect that cultural capital will differentiate social classes, with upper-middle-class parents encouraging their children to stay involved in education more than parents from other classes and, consequently, minimizing the risk to their children’s career. However, we also assume that beliefs in sport, meaning the adherence to the ‘illusio’ of the sporting field and the shared sporting culture, can reduce the differences during careers and expose all athletes, regardless of background, to risky transitions.

Exploratory interviews

A series of 10 in-depth interviews were first conducted to explore players playing in the National League (NL), ⁵ among whom five pursued a post-compulsory education and five did not. The interview grid was constructed according to the main predictors of the school dropout phenomenon found in the literature, and it served as the framework for collecting variables useful for comparing biographies. The open-ended questions and the prompts enabled the respondents to discuss the elements that they judged to be important in their career without their hierarchy being inferred by the interviewer. Although the entirety of their careers was described and analysed, all the players were interviewed with regard to their decision concerning schooling when they were between 15 and 20 years of age.

Quantitative inquiry

The initial analysis of the interviews was the basis for creating a questionnaire. The quantitative inquiry had the same themes as the interview grid, as well as additional elements that had arisen during discussions with the players. All Swiss hockey players born between 1963 and 1992 and having played at one of the highest levels (the NLA and/or NLB) were included in the quantitative data, representing a total of 1814 players. At the start of the survey, no database with the addresses of Swiss hockey players was available; eight months of research were necessary to collect this information. We were able to send the questionnaire to 1353 players. Finally, with a very satisfactory response rate (44.7%), our sample was composed of 605 German-speaking (56.2%), French-speaking (35.9%) and Italian-speaking (7.9%) players.

Second set of interviews

The quantitative data provided a basis for understanding the beginning of players’ careers. They also enabled us to better situate the interviewees’ experiences in the Swiss hockey community and, accordingly, to select a second set of 26 hockey players who have played in both the NLA and the NLB to observe the possible effects of different engagements in sport, noting ‘their properties, dimensions, and variations’ (Corbin and Strauss, 1990). By convenience, all the players questioned by interview were French-speaking. The theoretical bases of school dropout did not fit with our observations indicating a connection between school disengagement and adherence to the hockey doxa. Although we cannot deny being influenced by Bourdieu in our initial hypothesis, we wanted to prioritize our empirical data, as suggested by grounded theory (Corbin and Strauss, 1990). Thus, we first performed open and then axial coding of the interviews. The NVivo program was used as a support for coding and analysis. Selective coding was used to extract the fundamental semantic elements and to group them into ‘categories’ (Strauss and Corbin, 1998), not with NVivo but through our own synthesis of the data. One potential limitation, we recognize, is whether it is actually credible to use methods inspired by grounded theory alongside Bourdieu’s work; an explanation is that we favour the latter’s reflexive and anthropological dimensions (Wacquant, 1989). Although we started with an initial interview grid inspired by the literature, the indicators were grouped in other types during and after collecting the data, but doing so fits with the diversity of uses and the flexibility of grounded methods (Charmaz and Bryant, 2011).

Does the strength of the belief in hockey crush the differences in social class?

With the exception of four players, all athletes interviewed were from ‘sports-minded’ families, which was clearly not a criterion of selection for our sample. This important influence of family socialization was observed in both the register of an identical or near-identical reproduction, with the father already being part of the hockey milieu, and the transmission of favourable dispositions towards sport, i.e. the parents being engaged in other sports. The quantitative data confirm this family sports acculturation: more than 80% of fathers (44.5% of mothers) practise at least one sport, with 56% (14%) of them doing so at a competitive level. A total of 50% of the fathers practise a team sport; for over half of them, it is ice hockey. The determinants in the paths through schooling are not explained by the differences between families, with some valuing hockey and others not. All players give basically the same narrative of a parental sacrifice for their sporting career. This finding suggests a close family tie to the sports doxa and that sport capital is of high value and worthy of investment. Close to 90% of the players declared that their parents willingly financed the expenses related to hockey, regardless of their financial situation. However, as in other contexts, in which some parents strongly encourage their children’s involvement in a performance-oriented ethos and others are more ‘guided by progressive ideas about gender and fatherhood’ (Coakley, 2006: 157–158), there is a diversity of beliefs in hockey, despite all players’ strong commitment to the game. It seems that the proximity of parents, especially fathers, to the doxa of hockey may help explain these ‘little’ differences that support an overemphasis on sport and an undervaluing of educational qualifications. In summary, when a player and his family adhere totally to the doxa of hockey, sport capital will be overvalued, and educational qualifications, as a form of cultural capital, will be undervalued. The young hockey players often had difficulties imagining themselves in an occupational activity; more than half (55%) of our sample of 605 players did not have a vocational project at the end of their compulsory schooling. ⁶ Adherence to the hockey ‘illusio’ undeniably changes the path through schooling, accentuating or causing dropout. However, the ‘illusio’ also shapes how players plan their future, give value to sport capital and prepare their transition, thus making dropout the more likely outcome. But, unexpectedly, considering the literature, the cultural capital and social positions of families do not differentiate decisions much.

Players who stayed involved in education

Players who left education

For those who stopped their schooling, the evidence indicates that they perceived that their parents’ support of studying was not particularly strong. For them, there is a clear link between the lack of interest in scholastic culture and the very high value given to sport capital, by both the athletes and the parents. The socialization of those dropping out of school did not engender a scholastic habitus (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990) strong enough to produce the affinity necessary to give value to educational capital. The statistics on this question indicate that when the players have parents – and, even more significantly, mothers – with a low level of involvement in their path through schooling, they are more likely to have repeated a year at the primary level and secondary level and to consider it to be less important to have post-compulsory education (see Tables 1 and 2). The more salient characteristics of the players who leave school are as follows: a negative school experience; parents who share a performance-oriented ethos; and a relative level of autonomy in educational choices. These variables influence both upper- and lower-middle-class players.

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Table 1.

Percentage of players who repeated a year at primary school (n=448).

		Father	Mother
Parent’s involvement regarding education	Strong	5.8%	4.8%
	Weak	12.0%	16.3%

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Table 2.

Percentage of players who consider it less important to have a post-compulsory education (n=483).

		Father	Mother
Parent’s involvement regarding education	Strong	5.4%	5.2%
	Weak	10.1%	25.5%

A hockey career as a promising future

Parents’ beliefs in hockey, their unfaltering engagement or their valuation of education definitely influence players’ choices. The differential values given to sport capital versus cultural capital explain why some families, from different social backgrounds, internalize an exclusive ‘performance-oriented ethos’ (Coakley, 1983) that has consequences for education. Embracing this ethos, bounding the influence of social class and cultural capital, may be facilitated by the specific position of hockey in the sporting field and its meaning in Swiss society. The social capital valorized in the field of hockey encompasses connections ‘between people who share broadly similar demographic characteristics’ (Woolcock, 2001) but not with people from outside the ‘traditional’ Swiss community. In addition, the process of the professionalization and globalization of ice hockey in Switzerland (Moret, 2017) increased players’ aspirations to become professional. They wish to join the highest level in Switzerland (NLA) or dream of joining the NHL. However, careers are very short, and players are unlikely to make it to the NHL or to be among the 450 Swiss professional players. Indeed, lesser ambitions are observed among the oldest players in our sample, ⁸ who initially experienced less favourable conditions for a professional pathway into hockey. All these players declare they had ‘never thought of becoming a professional hockey player’; their ambition was more to ‘play in the first team of their club’, which was either in the NLB or the 1^st League (3^rd level). It is clear that players’ expectations of social and economic success have increased in parallel with the changes in Switzerland, influenced by the advent of ice hockey as a global media sport (Maguire, 1999).

A belief in hockey social capital as a resource for the future

Leaving education increases the risks for all players. Social capital, gained through hockey networks, can be a resource for all players, those with or without education. In addition, regardless of the role of social capital, the risks taken by athletes dropping out of school and having low qualifications are higher. However, a lack of schooling is not perceived as a risk because of an extremely positive representation ascribed to sports networks, which players hope to convert into social capital (Bourdieu, 1986: 51) for a future transition.

Approximately 70% of the players questioned consider that their hockey networks greatly favoured access to the job market, and 50% of the players indicated that they used hockey networks to find a job. ⁹ Thus, the belief in the conversion of sport capital into social capital is strengthened because the sports networks widen the frontiers of occupational integration beyond that of the sports performance market.

Whether they are real or simply imagined, the representations of the integration possibilities offered by the sports networks function partly as myths that feed the sense of belonging to the field of sport. Philippe confides that:

The director of the main sponsor lives only for hockey. With him, if you have a guy who wants to work and who is excellent at hockey, even if he has no paper qualification, he’ll give him a chance. And if he’s good on the ice, he’ll say that he’s incredible at work because he will not even realize how he works.

However, the conversion of sport capital into employment seems to be practised in the world of Swiss hockey and especially appears to reassure some hockey players about their future. Belief in the value of sport capital is reinforced by this conviction in the efficacy of sports networks. This result fits with the observations of Baltisberger and Nagel (2016): hockey players have higher professional positions than their brothers with the same level of school education.

Alan, however, judges that this mobilization of social capital is more frequent in the lower leagues: ‘In the 1st League, it’s very easy for them to find us a job and a good one, so I’m now looking into this possibility’. He tells us that he makes it a condition for the club that hires him. This strategy can be explained by the sponsoring of the Swiss hockey clubs. Brands are either local or national and are well established in the local economy, and it is not rare for players to find jobs there. Therefore, it seems ‘rational’ to play in lower leagues at the end of the career to prepare for the transition.

A shared belief in hockey but not the same risks

The perception of hockey as a key resource is built along the career because of the strength of sport socialization, reinforced by talent recognition and consecration. Similar to others, Serge did not think about becoming a hockey player right away: ‘I didn’t think about making sport my job when I was little. I did think about it as soon as I could practise with the first team’. Serge’s story indicates that it was indeed not only sport socialization in local clubs but also what is perceived as a consecration by professional structures and people whom he believed in that reinforced his commitment and his desire to be a professional. The apparent limited influence of social class on parents’ endowment of their children with sport capital may be explained, in our case, by the aggregation of different types of school dropout, meanings and risks in regard to social class.

Regarding educational choices (Ball et al., 1996), resourceful parents are better able to ‘work the system’ and exploit their networks and knowledge to support their children. For upper-middle-class athletes, such as Ivan, the end of schooling also becomes self-evident. The combination of school dislike, bad marks, strong paternal support and the very high value given to sport capital also encourage him to leave school when a major club contacts him. However, Ivan and his family choose school dropout because they believe in hockey as an alternative strategy of social excellence that plays down the consequences of dropping out of school. Choosing an exclusive sporting career is a family strategy supported by Ivan’s father, who strongly pushes him. In addition, it worked well. This result shows that reproduction and even upward mobility can work, at least temporarily, without education.

For lower-middle-class athletes, with lower parental resources and support for schooling, such as Didier, a hockey career is valued as the sole and unexpected opportunity for upward mobility, as school was not a realistic option. His risky bet for upward mobility, supported by his parents, pushed him into a sporting career. However, it was not a clear family strategy but, rather, the outcome of the combination of his conversion to hockey that went along with his school dropout. The strong family belief in sport capital made the end of schooling self-evident. Excluding himself from schooling is normalized: he built his competences around sport and is well recognized for it.

However, compared to Ivan, Didier has no credible plan B through education. In addition, despite no real chances of a professional career, Didier continues to believe in the social capital of hockey for his future. Clearly, not all players take the same risks because other players from wealthier families, such as Ivan, can also rely on their parents’ networks, wealth and support for their transition. The implication is that even if the belief in sport capital reduces social differences, this reduction is only temporary. Ivan has real agency; owing to his resources, he could have time to study or to find another option if his career ended. However, for lower-middle-class athletes, such as Didier or Yanis, their agency is weak. Yanis even feels unable to choose his job: ‘there’s always a job, even if you don’t always choose which one’. Compared to his initial dream of upward mobility through hockey, his resignation to inevitability appears as a ‘taste of necessity’ (Bourdieu, 1984) and is a ‘symbolic violence’ that dreamers from the upper-middle classes experience less frequently.

Increasing inequalities in the increasingly global ice hockey market

Positions as a professional player are rare, and most players will experience a shift between their disposition for a career at the top and their position, often declassified. Such is the case for Ronald. He stopped his education early and observed limited opportunities for his hockey career, and his parents do not believe in pursuing exclusively a hockey career (see above). Therefore, when he faced difficulties, he was more reflexive because of the ‘times of crises, in which the routine adjustment of subjective and objective structures is brutally disrupted’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). Thus, he tried and was able, owing to family support, to find options to escape the difficulties of a career that was ending prematurely.

However, Yanis and Didier, despite their difficulties, have no resource to adjust their disposition and still believe in hockey as a ‘path of salvation’, and it is more resignation than reflexivity that characterizes how they shape their plan B. The belief in social capital, to compensate for a lack of education, is definitely riskier for players with weak family resources. Realistically, scholastic disengagement reduces the available choices. The implication is that without social resources, dedicating everything to the sport project and believing in ‘the strength of weak ties’ (Granovetter, 1973) of the hockey network reduce athletes’ agency. The positive examples of professional transitions, achieved with sport-related social capital, confirm to the players their choice of investing themselves completely in hockey when, in fact, they actually do not have many alternatives. The belief in the value of sport engagement amongst some young players, coupled with school disengagement, leads them to make sport their only means of survival. This extremely positive perception of the value of sport capital may also be supported by the benefits that players experience in local contexts. Significant media coverage of athletes, initially in the local press and networks but then on a wider scale, favours recognition by their peers (friends, acquaintances, girlfriends) in their local social networks (at school, in sport, in bars).

Although successful players, in the best clubs or gaining access to the NHL, will benefit from this new global economy of hockey, it is a winner-take-all market (Frank and Cook, 2010) and losers will have decreasing benefits because of the weakening of local networks. With their early and increasing circulation between clubs and around the country, players are less embedded in the local community and have more difficulties converting their sport capital into social capital that will help them find jobs. This situation makes schooling or family resources to support the career transition even more important than in the past. With the globalization of hockey, the risk due to the shift between dispositions and positions increased. Athletes tend to lose control over the process of conversion of sport capital into social capital. This convertibility relied on strong local links owing to local sponsors. However, the rise of a more global market of players has changed the economy and has increased players’ circulation between clubs. This transformation is a real threat to the social capital embedded in the local economy. Simultaneously, the percentage of players without any post-compulsory schooling is increasing – from an average of 8% to 15% among players of the youngest quartile, despite the context of an overall increase in schooling. The gap between the globalization of hockey and the hope that local networks will be a support is characteristic of the Swiss situation, which is open to a global economy but is trying to maintain the illusion of the importance of local actors. Furthermore, no significant changes in universities or from the state to support these athletes are observed.

Conclusion

Reproduction is not obvious or immediately visible. There is a compelling attraction of sport capital for parents who believe in the hockey doxa, regardless of their social background. Our initial supposition regarding the key role of social position, cultural capital and economic capital is not totally convincing. It is more the Weberian inspiration of Bourdieu (emphasizing beliefs over capital), rather his Marxist-inspired ideas, that provides our complementary explanations. Our results suggest, when studying the role of the various forms of capital, one should pay more attention to both beliefs and contexts. The more the parents believe in the value of sport capital and are involved in the sporting field, the less important education is for athletes, regardless of social class.

The shared ‘illusio’ seems to reduce the influence of social class because of sporting careers that are sometimes similar. However, it hides important differences: common beliefs do not mean a similar situation or a common destiny. For upper-middle-class players, with dominant economic capital, the belief in hockey is combined with a family strategy that fits with their valuing of risk and of a sporting career as a kind of entrepreneurship: the main project is to be successful in hockey and to have access to a valorized social position as a professional hockey player, ideally in the NHL or the NLA in Switzerland. To that end, schooling is not necessary. These athletes report strong family support in sport but weaker support in schooling. There is a kind of agency because hockey is used as a good resource to maintain the family’s social position or to expect having upward social mobility. Players from the lower-middle classes share the same aspiration for a valorized social position as a professional hockey player. It is not based on a clear strategy; it is built over time, with parents who are converted owing to their successful son but who do not initially push for a career. Compared to the other athletes, players from parents with higher cultural capital and/or who are more sensitive to scholastic culture experience more autonomy in their sporting choices, but their parents are more involved in schooling. Supported by their family, they build a strategy for a plan B when ending their career or even manage to have another professional career in parallel with their sporting career.

The apparent common situation of players also hides unequal resources for facing the transitions at the end of their careers. Upper-middle-class and more ‘cultivated’ middle-class players have strategies that put them less at risk. They anticipate the possible options, support or networks that can be activated in case of an early career ending. For most players, sport capital evaporates at the end of the career, and sport capital, as a symbolic capital, will not be converted into a valuable social capital, especially with a more global environment. However, lower-middle-class players with few options for a plan B continue to believe in hockey even when the chances of having a prestigious career are close to zero. The gap between their hope for a prestigious career and ending up with a job that they did not plan for is important. However, they ignore the social causes of this predictable misfortune and believe that their difficulties can simply be explained by destiny, bad luck, an injury or ageing.

Furthermore, social inequalities may rise because most of the players from the more recent generation, without education and from the lower-middle classes, will face increasing difficulties in their transition. They will have to face a combination of the weakening of local networks due to a more global game and the saturation of available jobs in the hockey field. The market increase is stabilized, and most of the jobs are now occupied by the past generation of players or by players with experience in the prestigious NHL who are applying for staff jobs.

Most of the athletes must face risks (over-training, lack of motivation, injuries, ageing) that are threats to their bodily capital. In addition, preparing for the transition to another career should not rely solely on family support because of the important social inequalities that doing so creates. Sports organizations should be more concerned with these issues and should implement policies so that a performance-oriented ethos and education are not perceived as mutually exclusive, thus helping support career transitions for the athletes who need it.