Re-thinking aspirations through habitus and capital: The experiences of British-born Bangladeshi women in higher education

Abstract

Since the turn of the century, young people’s aspirations have featured prominently in UK education policy and practice. Governments of all sides have espoused a rhetoric and enacted initiatives which have tended to focus on somehow ‘correcting’ the aspirations of students of working-class and minority ethnic origins. This paper applies a Bourdieusian framework to the analysis of the education and career aspirations of British-born young women of Bangladeshi heritage in higher education. In doing so, it advances a theoretically informed understanding of aspirations, which accounts for the multiple factors that contribute to shape them as well as for the relative implications in terms of future pathways. Drawing on interviews with 21 female undergraduate students, and building on Bourdieu’s notions of habitus and capital, I conceptualise aspirations as an aspect of habitus. I argue that this conceptualisation allows light to be shed on the ways in which multiple, intersecting dimensions of social identity and social structures play out in the shaping, re-shaping and possibly fading of aspirations. Additionally, it enables us to examine the mutually informing influences of aspirations and capital on practice. Findings indicate that the valuing of education and social mobility expressed by those of Bangladeshi and other minority ethnic origins are integral to collective constructions of ‘what people like us do’, which are grounded in diasporic discourses. They also illuminate the significance of social and cultural capital for young people’s capacity to aspire and actualise aspirations, as these contribute to delineate their ‘horizons for action’. This suggests that by failing to adequately recognise how structural inequalities inform differential access to valued capital, prevailing policy and practitioners’ approaches attribute excessive responsibility to students and their parents. The notion of ‘known routes’ is in this respect put forward as a way to make sense of aspirations, expectations and pathways, and the role of institutions in forging possible futures is highlighted.

Keywords

Aspirations Bourdieu capital class employment ethnicity habitus higher education

Introduction

This paper engages with the experiences of British-born young women of Bangladeshi origins in higher education with the aim to explore and explain how multiple dimensions of social identity (e.g. class, ‘race’, ethnicity and gender) contribute to inform their educational and employment aspirations and pathways. It does so by applying a Bourdieusian framework to the analysis of participants’ narratives, drawing especially on Bourdieu’s (1977, 1986) theory of practice and key notions of habitus, capital and field. Building on this framework, I provide a theoretically grounded conceptualisation of these women’s aspirations, which sheds light on their socially embedded character. The analysis presented attests to the importance of shared histories (of class, ‘race’, ethnicity and gender) transmitted inter-generationally through everyday discourses in framing understandings and constructions of ‘what we do’ and ‘what is possible for those like us’. Findings also demonstrate the significance of (classed, racialised, ethnicised and gendered) resources and differential degrees of (mis)match with those being privileged in different educational and employment contexts in defining the formation and actualisation of aspirations. In this sense, the discussion conducted strongly prolematises individualistic understandings of aspirations and ‘choice’, while urging on the other hand to appreciate more fully their collocation within and relations to unequal social structures, as well as the implications of this for potential approaches to redressing inequalities.

In what follows, I begin by briefly considering what the adoption of a Bourdieusian perspective can bring to the analysis of young people’s aspirations. I then outline the empirical scope of this study, and subsequently move on to discuss the main findings. The first section focuses on various discourses of aspiration and achievement put forward by the women interviewed and their parents. In making sense of expressed understandings and practices, and building on previous research (Archer and Francis, 2006, 2007; Feliciano and Lanuza, 2016, 2017), I conceptualise aspirations as an aspect of habitus. I argue for the value of this analytical approach in enabling the recognition and investigation of the structural and cultural components at play in the shaping, re-shaping and possible fading of aspirations, and of the mutually informing influences of aspiration and capitals on practice. In this sense, the valuing of education and social mobility expressed by those of Bangladeshi and other minority ethnic origins (Basit, 2012, 2013; Modood, 2004; Reay et al., 2007; Shah et al., 2010) can be seen as integral to collective constructions of ‘what people like us do’, which are grounded in diasporic discourses. The second section provides a detailed examination of participants’ career aspirations and expected pathways. I highlight the significance of social and cultural capital in informing these women’s ‘horizons for action’ (Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997) and their capacity to actualise them, and advance the notion of ‘known routes’ (Archer and Francis, 2007) as a way to interpret aspirations, expectations and trajectories. Consequently, I stress the importance of schools, extracurricular activities and work experiences in creating possible futures.

Using Bourdieu’s ‘toolbox’ to unpack aspirations

Young people’s aspirations have occupied, since the turn of the century, centre stage in a broad range of policy initiatives aimed at bridging the ‘achievement gap’ among students from different socio-economic backgrounds, widening participation in higher education, and improving social mobility outcomes (BIS, 2014, 2015; DfES, 2003; HEFCE, 2010). Underlying these initiatives, which have been enacted by Labour, Coalition, and most recently Conservative governments alike, is the premise that raising the aspirations of students from ‘non-traditional backgrounds’ would eventually increase their access to university, which would then advance their career prospects. Despite the worthy intention of ensuring more equitable participation in education and employment, the proposed framework has arguably contributed to the establishment of a deficit view of targeted students and contexts of origins, where these are seen as somehow lacking and requiring interventions of some sort (Gorard et al., 2006). The discourses adopted by policy makers and practitioners in relation to the aspirations of students of working-class and minority ethnic background, in particular, have tended to be strongly pathologising. These discourses often mark the aspirations expressed by these students as being ‘too low’, ‘too narrow’, or ‘too high’/‘unrealistic’, and requiring therefore being ‘raised’, ‘stretched’ or directed towards ‘more realistic’ goals (Archer and Francis, 2007; Basit, 2012; Crozier and Davies, 2006). I contend however that this focus on ‘correcting’ aspirations is in fact problematic, as ‘choice’ is constructed as substantially located within the domain of individual agency while the influence of social structures and institutions is neglected (Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997; Spohrer, 2011).

To keep the attention firmly placed on the ways in which individuals’ orientations and actions are shaped by broader social structures, this study investigates education and employment aspirations and pathways through a Bourdieusian lens of analysis. This allows for the mutual inscription of structure and agency to be brought to the foreground (Bourdieu, 1990; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992), enabling us to tease out the intersecting roles of multiple dimensions of social identity (e.g. class, ‘race’, ethnicity and gender) without losing perspective of the structural inequalities that characterise them. Bourdieu broadly conceptualises practice as being generated by the interplay among agents’ classed dispositions (‘habitus’), the stock of economic, cultural and social resources they possess which are of value in the context where they engage (‘specific capital’), and the structure and logics of this context (‘field’) in terms of power relations between individuals and groups (Bourdieu, 1984: 101). Habitus is the element by which (unequal) social structures are internalised, and guide individuals’ cognition and behaviour (Bourdieu, 1977, 1990). This can be seen as a mental and bodily schemata which derives from the internalisation of the constraints and opportunities that characterise one’s conditions of existence, and only generates practices in line with these conditionings. Habitus is constantly restructured in its encounter with ‘new’ fields, and confronted with the most varied circumstances it can generate very different courses of action (Bourdieu, 1990: 55; 1977: 87; 2007: 135). Yet, it always retains a certain inertia, as it pre-consciously perceives given courses of action as plausible, others as conceivable and yet others as unthinkable (Bourdieu, 2007: 133).

The analysis conducted in this paper takes the education and labour markets as its fields of interest, where participants to this study are engaged in competition with others over academic credentials and employment positions. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and capitals, it sheds light on the ways in which attitudes, practices and experiences are informed by classed, racialised, ethnicised and gendered positionings. I argue that such an approach allows us to expose, examine and evaluate the profound effects of unequally distributed material and symbolic resources. In particular, as it helps us to recognise individuals’ outlooks and experiences as being shaped by the mutual inter-relations among their (classed, racialised, ethnicised and gendered) resources and dispositions, and those that are privileged in the contexts they are involved in. Such framework, that is, helps us to acknowledge that not all trajectories are equally likely for any one person. Yet, as habitus only actualises itself in relation to definite structures of power within fields (Bourdieu, 2007: 135), practices cannot be simply deduced from its conditions of production. Rather than implying a mechanistic reproduction of class positions, therefore, Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of practice encourages us to understand possibilities for change as emerging out of specific configurations among individual’s dispositions and resources and the structure and logics of the field where they engage.

Research context and design

The social-structural positioning and trajectory of the UK-resident population of Bangladeshi heritage plays an important role in informing the economic, social and cultural resources that young people of Bangladeshi origins living in the UK can access. With about 51% of Bangladeshi households living on less than 60% of the median UK household income, Bangladeshis experience the highest levels of income poverty compared to other ethnicities (DWP, 2015). Unemployment and economic inactivity are particularly high, especially among women, and those in employment are over-represented in low-paid routine and semi-routine occupations, for example as kitchen labourers, sales assistants and cab drivers (Clark and Drinkwater, 2007; DWP, 2016; ONS, 2012). Women’s higher education and labour market participation is amongst the lowest of all major ethnic groups, with the latest Census data reporting only around 40% of those aged 25–49 as either working or looking for jobs (Nazroo and Kapadia, 2013). Recent trends point however to growing participation and achievement in schooling and higher education, and to upward social mobility among UK‐born generations (CoDE, 2014; Runnymede Trust, 2012). The number of women attending university, in particular, has increased substantially in the last 20 years (Lymperopoulou and Parameshwaran, 2015). Between 1991 and 2011, the proportion of people of Bangladeshi origins aged 16+ holding degree level qualifications has risen from 5% to 20%, with women accounting for around 8% (ONS, 2011a, 2011b; Lymperopoulou and Parameshwaran, 2015).

This study builds on two rounds of semi-structured interviews conducted with 21 British-born female undergraduate students of Bangladeshi heritage in their early 20s attending university in London. London is home to around 58% of the UK-resident Bangladeshi population, which is largely concentrated in the Eastern borough of Tower Hamlets, one of the most deprived local authorities in England and a traditional area of settlement for Bangladeshi immigrants (DCLG, 2009, 2010; ONS, 2011c). Although unintentionally, this residential pattern was also manifested in my sample, where most participants originally came from Tower Hamlets. Some of them had then moved with their parents to Outer London boroughs, reflecting the tendency for upwardly mobile families of minority ethnic background to move from the inner city to the suburbs in search for better housing and schooling opportunities, and for a ‘safer’ neighbourhood environment (Butler and Hamnett, 2011).

At the time of the interviews, participants were studying for a variety of undergraduate degrees at a range of differently ranked universities (five Russell Group institutions, one ‘old’ non-Russell Group university and three ex-polytechnics), spanning across the humanities, social sciences and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects. Primary and secondary schooling also included institutions as diverse as community schools, academies, faith schools, and grammar and private schools. Interviewees were purposefully recruited so that the universities attended differed from one another in terms of ranking, educational curriculum and practices, student intake and social environment. Such diversity afforded the opportunity to consider how these young women’s outlooks and experiences were shaped by the interplay among individual and institutional characteristics. Pseudonyms are used to refer to participants in the discussion of findings, and the type of institution and course of studies attended are specified throughout. Recruitment took place both by directly approaching potential participants at university entrances and public spaces, and by establishing contacts through students’ Bangladeshi and Islamic societies. While I deliberately restricted my focus to London, it is interesting to note that most interviewees had only applied to institutions within the city, reflecting what is already indicated by other studies in terms of the tendency among students of minority ethnic origins to attend universities that are close to the family home (Runnymede Trust, 2010). The few exceptions were represented by applications to Oxbridge and other Russell Group universities outside of London. However, those who applied to these universities finally ended up remaining in London as this allowed them to attend the ‘best’ institution they could access with their grades. Another notable exception was represented by a young woman of middle-class background who came from outside London to study at a top-ranking institution.

In terms of family background, almost all of these young women’s parents came from Bangladesh at different points in their lives, except two of the mothers who were born in Britain. In presenting findings, I broadly distinguish between working-class and middle-class origins on the grounds of the salary and status that are generally attached to parental occupation. It is however worth noting that there was in fact considerable within-class variation in terms of the overall amount and composition of economic, social and cultural capital that these young women could access. In those families I define as working-class (16 out of 21); fathers were employed in both blue collar and white collar jobs, requiring different sets of skills. For example, as construction and factory workers, mini-cab drivers, chefs, tailors, shopkeepers, mentors and tutors. Mothers were instead either housewives (13) or working in low-skilled positions in the social and education sectors (3). Middle-class parents also had jobs which ranged from owning small businesses, to the medical, legal, social and educational professions, and held different educational credentials. Apart from those parents who had middle-class jobs, none of them had a university degree, although they were mostly educated at least at General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) level. Some interviewees also had older siblings and relatives who went to university before them. Differential access to capital was therefore not only provided by parents, but also importantly by other family members. The significance of these multiple sources, especially in relation to cultural and social capital, is underscored throughout the following analysis.

Valuing education and ‘achievement’

Considering the relative recency of the participation in higher education of students of Bangladeshi background (CoDE, 2014; Lymperopoulou and Parameshwaran, 2015), it is striking to note how going to university was presented by all of the young women interviewed as both normal and as expected of them. This was the case for those of working-class as well as of middle-class origins, irrespective of whether their parents or older relatives had themselves attained a higher education degree. Attending university was consistently framed by participants as ‘a must’, ‘the next natural step from college’, and something they ‘always knew’ they would go on to do (Modood, 2004: 94). It was, in other words, a course of action which was taken for granted rather than being the object of conscious deliberation and negotiations. This expectation was moreover shared among the different networks that these women inhabited, i.e. their families, the Bangladeshi ‘community’, and college, which contributed to its strength.

The following quotes illustrate how aspiration and orientation towards education were recurrently identified as substantially permeating the home environment:

In our family it’s always about trying to achieve higher. So even if you do need to study further to achieve higher, that’s an option that you will take on. (Mita, working-class; Russell Group 1, BA Education Studies)

[My parents] have always been into education. Even when we were younger, they always encouraged us to work even at home, do extra work and stuff like that. (Fauzia, working-class; Russell Group 2, BSc Mathematics)

Like many others, Mita and Fauzia refer to these attitudes as having ‘always’ been held by their families, thus attesting to an early and consistent socialisation to such norms.

As very well conveyed by Leena when she states that ‘it rubs off on you’, parental outlooks towards achievement and education appear to have been acquired and internalised by respondents, whose articulations of their aspirations and ways to achieve them reveal an across the board commitment to occupational mobility, and a view of higher education as both intrinsically and instrumentally valuable. In this respect, they also show conformity to dominant public and policy discourses (Archer and Hutchings, 2000). Despite acknowledging the disadvantages deriving from their minority ethnic and working-class background, these young women retained a strong faith in their chances to climb the social ladder. Key to this were the possibilities granted by a university degree. This widely shared conception of higher education’s instrumental value was expressed for example by Chandi, a working-class girl who studied Economics in a high ranking university, who commented:

That’s a lot of debt, but it’s not off-putting because I know I’ll get a job out of it. […] It’s hard to work your way up, but I didn’t go to university, the job I’d probably get wouldn’t have paid much and working my way up I wouldn’t get that far. (Chandi, working-class; Russell Group 2, BSc Economics)

In the above quotation, Chandi points to the substantial debt that going to university will place on her. Yet, she argues that this has not been discouraging, as she perceives the benefits in terms of improved career opportunities as outweighing the downsides. As interviews were conducted in 2014/15, all of those who participated in this study had been affected by the 2012 increase in university fees bringing them up to £9,000. Those young women who came from working-class families mentioned having to rely upon loans. Although, like Chandi, none of the women I interviewed had been ‘put off’ by the high fees, some of them discussed the constraints on decision-making that this presented. A few of them specified in particular that they would not have gone to university had they not been able to access a prestigious one, as they would not have considered this to be a worthy investment:

I mean university fees are nine grand now, I wouldn't want to go to anything sort of below [my university’s] standards, I wouldn't pay that much to do that. (Jamila, working-class; Russell Group 2, BA English Literature)

Others, like Kanta, spoke about friends and acquaintances who had been deterred from applying to university by the high fees and expected debt. Chiming with those of other participants, Kanta’s reflections draw attention to the ways in which the prospect of interests to be repaid can be especially discouraging for young people of Islamic faith, who face the dilemma of having to reconcile this with religious prescriptions:

As a practising Muslim, one thing that we believe in is that we should try and avoid interest. […] Because with the new tuition fee rise, it meant I would be paying a lot more interest back. […] I read a lot about it online because a lot of people had this issue. One of my friends in fact decided not to go to university and has actually not gone now just because she feels she can't, she has to prioritise her beliefs about interest. (Kanta, working-class; Russell Group 3, BSc Government and Economics)

While Kanta overcame this dilemma by drawing on Islamic teachings to support the priority attributed to education, her account is nevertheless revealing of how the expectation of interests on student loans can prevent young people of working-class, Muslim background from taking up university. Reflecting another recurrent theme, her narrative additionally shows how the prospect of debt can be particularly off-putting for those young people who do not have a particular passion for any one subject, or a clear idea of what career to pursue:

I think for [my friend] part of the reason was because she didn't know what she wanted to do at university. Also it was really expensive and she just thought: ‘I'm going to go to university pay all this much without knowing, I don't have something I really want to study’.

lt is additionally worth noting that a few young women also recognised internships and vocational training as valuable routes to achieving social mobility. In the following extract, Sadia talks for instance about the characteristics that she would like her future husband to have, mentioning having ‘a career’ as one of them. While she identifies internships as an important means through which one can progress in their career, however, her further elaboration also reveals an awareness of the higher status that is generally attributed to higher education, especially where postgraduate studies are pursued:

I don’t think education is the only way you can be successful, it’s not the only way you can have a career. Because even a lot of my friends who didn't go to university but went straight into internships, they’re now working in these amazing companies. […] But that being said I also think, because men get emasculated so easily, so it’s really important like they shouldn't feel insecure by the fact that I went to university. So if they can handle that then, you know, if I want to pursue further education like Masters or PhD. (Sadia, working-class; Russell Group 4, BSc Geography)

The strong attribution of value to education, especially as a way of attaining upward mobility, has been deemed characteristic of parents and students from different minority ethnic backgrounds regardless of class location (Butler and Hamnett, 2011; Reay et al., 2007). In this sense, the attitudes that have been documented as prevalent among these minority ethnic groups have been likened to those expressed by the White middle classes (Reay et al., 2007). Various studies have referred to this as an ‘aspirational habitus’ (Archer and Francis, 2007), ‘aspirational capital’ (Basit, 2012) and as an aspect of ‘ethnic capital’ (Modood, 2004; Shah et al., 2010), with each of these definitions emphasising distinct features. Here, I build specifically on Archer’s and Francis’ notion of aspirational habitus, and bring to light some significant elements which, I contend, can help to illuminate the nature of aspirations.

The interlacing of past, present and future, individual and collective

Firstly, the concept of habitus draws attention to the role of shared histories – e.g. of class, ‘race’, ethnicity, gender and migration – in structuring understandings and practices of those who belong to particular ‘groups’ (Reay, 2004). This is especially evident throughout participants’ narrations, where a number of discourses were evoked in which past, present and future were woven together, linking the importance of education for young people to the difficulties experienced by parents through migration and settlement. These discourses are both ethnicised and classed, and appear to serve a double purpose. They function on the one hand as frameworks for the understanding and construction of one’s social identity, and on the other as generative of practices that are coherent with that construction. In particular, they act to establish an image of Bangladeshis as ‘always having been aspirational’, though not always having had the right opportunities. At the same time, they promote the take-up of higher education among the younger generations by presenting it both as a need, in order to secure a career, and as a responsibility.

One of the main arguments that were raised was that of parents not having enjoyed the same opportunities for formal education (Archer and Francis, 2007; Basit, 2012, 2013; Shah et al., 2010). Sultana, whose mother worked as a primary school supervisor, noted for example:

My mum does push me to do well in life just because she couldn't, she didn't have the same options as I do. […] Just because of loads of factors, because of her parents, and because of how society used to be with racism and, you know, only white people would go into higher education and not any other coloured people. (Sultana, working-class; Ex-polytechnic 1, BSc Youth Studies)

This construction of parents ‘valuing education but not having had the possibilities to pursue it’ (Archer and Francis, 2007) was expressed by many among those who came from working-class families, and appeared to provide them with an understanding of their working-class origins as being compatible with an orientation towards education. Sultana’s considerations are additionally illustrative of the gendered and racialised character of opportunities, as she reports on the constraints experienced by her mother as a woman of minority ethnic background.

Another recurrent theme was that of parents having renounced to living an ‘easier’ life in Bangladesh, and having endured the hardships connected with moving to the UK in order to ensure a better education and life prospects for their children. The quotations below illustrate how this argument was raised by participants of working-class and middle-class background alike:

My mum always says: ‘I came here for this, me and your dad came here for this, and then sometimes we would think “maybe we should just go back home, it’s easier and we know how everything works”, but then it requires a lot of perseverance’, and I think I rate them for that, that’s something that must have been really difficult. (Kanta, working-class; Russell Group 4, BSc Government and Economics)

My family are very keen on education because my parents came to this country for the sake of mine and my brothers’ education. […] They have sacrificed so much. Like in Bangladesh our life would be so much easier, but they had to struggle here for our education. (Shirina, middle-class; Russell Group 1, BA Classics)

As emerges from Kanta’s and Shirina’s extracts, this awareness, reinforced within the family through everyday discourses, engendered a sense of filial obligation, as children of immigrants, to follow in the path that was set for them by their parents through their ‘struggle’. For young women like Shirina, whose parents had already acquired graduate credentials in Bangladesh, the experience of them suffering from downward socio-economic mobility, and re-training in the UK to improve their position, also served as an example that this was possible.

Finally, parents’ experiences highlighted the presence of racism and discrimination in the labour market, and the consequent necessity, as someone from a minority ethnic background, to be better qualified than white British candidates in order to secure a position:

Because my parents faced a lot of racism, they always said to me that you have to work hard, you have to do well, in order to do well in this country you have to do better than your English counterparts. (Flora, middle-class; Russell Group 5, MBBS Medicine)

Some of the women who took part in this study, in addition, openly challenged the white male middle-class dominance of academia and employment that derives from more or less subtle forms of institutional and interpersonal racism. They did so by emphasising the importance of increasing the presence of women of minority ethnic origins, and by positioning themselves as both ‘trend-breakers’ and ‘trend-setters’.

The variety of discourses that have been presented can be seen as both drawing on a more or less coherent interpretative repertoire of the orientations towards education and work of Bangladeshis living in the UK, and as contributing to its (re)production. In this respect, it is interesting to notice how the narratives of parents are being taken up and employed by their daughters, informing their practices and becoming part of collective imaginaries that are transmitted inter-generationally. Like those exposed by Francis and Archer (2005; Archer and Francis, 2006, 2007) in relation to Chinese pupils and their parents, these too are ‘diasporic discourses’, which draw on, and speak to, the experiences of immigrants and their offspring. Here, migration to the UK is generally described as providing potential opportunities for upward social mobility for the younger generations, although often at the cost of both working-class and especially middle-class parents putting at jeopardy their established socio-economic positions through downward mobility. These discourses convey therefore an idea of struggle for migration and settlement as part of a long-term ‘family project’ for social mobility, which in the case of participants to this research appeared to encourage such pursuit (see also Feliciano and Lanuza, 2016, 2017).

Shay’s answer to the question of what it meant for her to be Bangladeshi can be seen as exemplifying this shared construction of Bangladeshis living in the UK as being aspirational:

Obviously we are from a poor background, we are like not really privileged and stuff, but we can work our way up to the top. Like we can work, we are determined and we always like, we want to be at the top. […] Coming over here to the UK where you have the opportunity to get a degree and stuff, [we] want to take the full advantage of it. (Shay, working-class; Russell Group 2, BSc Pharmaceutical Chemistry)

Jamila’s quotation further illuminates the diasporic character of such discourses, by revealing their reference to an amalgam of Bangladeshi values, Islamic teachings and opportunities provided by migration to Britain:

The desire to study and expand your knowledge and get somewhere is exactly what Bangladeshis were thinking when they came to London. It’s exactly what Muslims are taught to do, like you need to always be expanding your knowledge, [.] be the better version of yourself. So it’s all so interlinked. (Jamila, working-class; Russell Group 2, BA English Literature)

While not explicitly linked to discourses of past experiences, most participants also mentioned the strong expectation for adult children to provide for their families and look after their parents as further promoting young generations’ participation in higher education, and upholding their strive for upward socio-economic mobility by embedding such practices in specific constructions of culture and religion.

Consistently with the idea of habitus as a ‘matrix of perceptions’ that engenders interpretations and responses to different situations in accordance with past experiences of ‘people like us’ (Bourdieu, 1977, 1990), these young women often referred to determination and resilience as crucial characteristics to have in order to ‘achieve’. This emphasis on ‘striving hard to get what you want’, ‘not letting things bring you down’, and on the need to ‘carry on and go for it’, can be seen as congruent with the conceptualisation of aspirations as an aspect of habitus, as it stems from, as well as encouraging, persistence in the face of adversity.

The dynamism of practices

In relation to participation in higher education being perceived as ‘a norm’ within the Bangladeshi ‘community’, participants’ accounts further highlight how norms are in fact dynamic and subject to transformation, and point to the importance of older relatives in ‘setting the trend’. The following excerpt illuminates this process of change and establishment of new norms, where what was once seen as an exception becomes increasingly common and positively valued:

Before [my brother] the first graduate in my family was one of my uncles, so he kind of put his influence to my brother and then my brother’s influence came to me, and slowly we just started becoming aware of what university was and why it’s valued. (Megh, working-class; Pre ’92 non-Russell Group, BA History and Politics)

Reflecting a common trend, this quotation shows how the presence of older siblings and/or broader family members who have already gone to university bolsters the take-up of this same route in the younger generations. Directly available examples of social mobility through participation in higher education, to which one can closely relate, serve in this sense as a source of inspiration, as well as proving the value of this route to parents and elders. Furthermore, they provide a useful point of access to cultural capital, especially in terms of information and practical know-how in relation to institutional procedures (Basit, 2013; Crozier and Davies, 2006; Shah et al., 2010). The influence of social networks other than family, such as teachers, educational practitioners and friends, was also noted by several participants, who recognised them as important sources of information as well as motivation. As can be expected, this was especially the case for those of working-class origins, who had few highly educated relatives.

These considerations are revealing of the dynamism of cultures and embedded practices, and expose the processes of change that can take place throughout generations. In conformity with the dynamics of habitus, in addition, orientations developed throughout one’s upbringing were projected into the future through approaches and expectations around child rearing, as for Shirina, and marriage, as for Farhan, that point to an intergenerational transmission of aspiration:

I want [my children] to struggle for their education, […] work hard to get into the school that they go to so they appreciate school more, go to school, and then maybe hopefully work hard to come to a good university like I did. (Shirina, middle-class; Russell Group 1, BA Classics)

[My future husband] has to be someone who has a career. […] I want him to have aspirations, only because when you go to university, if you haven’t gone to university there is a lot of difference in understanding things. (Farhan, working-class; Ex-polytechnic 2, BA Sociology)

Farhan’s preference for a husband with higher education qualifications and a professional career resonates with that of almost all of the young women interviewed. Although economic stability was mentioned by a few respondents, expressed motivations had mainly to do with ensuring a ‘similarity of mind-set and values’. Some referred in this respect to a shift compared to their parents’ standards for the selection of potential husbands, which instead privileged wealth and family status. These accounts shed light on the subtlety of the processes through which class position is secured and reproduced, as cultural capital comes to substitute and thereby disguise economic capital in attributing ‘value’ and motivating preferences (Bourdieu, 2007: 46).

Finally, it is worth noting how aspirations were strictly linked to the transformation of gender norms and expectations, as all participants stressed the intention to graduate from university and to have both a family and a career, and observed how this prospect for their future was shared by their parents. Such an agreement on the importance of ensuring a stable job also meant that this pursuit provided space for the re-negotiation of established norms, as for marriage being postponed to an older age, travelling abroad, and living on one’s own.

Career aspirations and pathways

Looking in more detail at the specific jobs and areas of employment that participants mentioned considering, accounts reveal in the first place how instances where one particular profession of interest had been identified early on and followed coherently throughout the school years were relatively rare. Like Shay, whose reflections are reported below, most of these women had been and still were contemplating different options within one broad field, either because of changing perceptions of their own interests, or as they adapted to perceived opportunities and constraints to the actualisation of certain routes (Hart, 2013):

I’m trying to find work experience in my industry, the pharmaceutical industry and stuff, and impossible, absolutely impossible to get. And so my friend, she’s from Bahrain so from the Middle East, and she was telling me how there’s a lot of demand for chemistry students over there, in the petroleum industry, and there’s a lot of money in there as well, so I was like: ‘why not?’ (Shay, working-class; Russell Group 2, BSc Pharmaceutical Chemistry)

Especially evident in Shay’s account is the way in which social capital can function, through its presence or absence, to either create or curtail opportunities for taking up given paths. In her case, in particular, having a friend who informed her of opportunities available in the Middle East oil industry led to consider a different option from what she had initially aspired to. At the same time, the inability to access the pharmaceutical industry made this initial aspiration increasingly seem as non-realistic. Interests themselves, moreover, can arguably be seen as largely being shaped by the set of opportunities and constraints that individuals face, especially in terms of access to cultural and social capital. While these influences might not always be acknowledged at a conscious level, they appear in fact to impact considerably on both definition and pursuit of aspirations, as they contribute to structure one’s ‘horizons for action’ (Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997) and undarlay practices of self-exclusion from careers that privilege a different endowment of capitals (Bourdieu, 1984; Hart, 2013).

‘Known routes’

Once we adopt this perspective, it is easier to understand the popularity among these young women and their parents of what can be termed as ‘known routes’ (Archer and Francis, 2007: 134), which mainly included occupations in the legal, medical, education and care sectors. Drawing and expanding on Archer’s and Francis’ definition, such term is employed here to refer to those professions about which there is an established knowledge within the family and ‘community’, where this knowledge can derive from either one or all of the following: (1) Experience transmitted by relatives and/or acquaintances; (2) Substantial contact as ‘users’; (3) Well-defined pathway of steps into employment. Considering the relevance of social and cultural capital in shaping interests, these elements, illustrated in the following extracts, can be seen as important sources of access, which enhance awareness of the existence of certain jobs as well as of how to attain them. As evidenced by Shirina’s and Pavi’s accounts, ‘known routes’ were popular among participants of both working-class and middle-class origins, although differences in the social and cultural capital that these women could access translated into differences in their ‘horizons for action’:

I’ve always wanted to be a lawyer, because my dad is a lawyer and as I was growing up I used to help him with his cases, I used to draft letters and things like that. […] My expectation is that hopefully I graduate with a 2:1 or a first, I do my law conversion, I do my LPC, get a training contract at a law firm and then become a lawyer properly. (Shirina, middle-class; Russell Group 1, BA Classics)

Since I was a little girl, when I used to look at my teachers they used to inspire me, so since then I’ve been, that’s been my only career choice. […] In College whatever I chose, I chose according to that. […] And then in uni I made sure I chose Education Studies, […] and for my PGCE I also know to get directly into the career that I chose I’m going to have to do Primary PGCE. (Pavi, working-class; Ex-polytechnic 2, BA Education Studies)

As mentioned, there is a tendency in policy and practitioners’ discourses to frame the aspirations of students from minority ethnic backgrounds as somehow ‘dysfunctional’ (Basit, 2012; Crozier and Davies, 2006). South Asians, in particular, are often blamed for holding a set of aspirations that is ‘too limited’ and not enough diversified, and stereotypes abound of South Asian parents pushing their sons and daughters to become either doctors or lawyers. The above observations urge however for a re-consideration of the substantial role that is played in this sense by structural inequalities, as these function to systematically curtail access to important sources of capital and inform perceptions of what those of a certain ethnic background, class and gender (can) do. Another significant element that can help to explain parental preferences for certain careers is the relative connotation and attached socio-economic status. The high status and income that are generally ascribed to occupations such as being a doctor appear to acquire particular significance for Bangladeshi immigrant parents within their view of social mobility as a ‘family project’. In this sense, adult children’s achievement of highly regarded and well retributed jobs can be seen as the fulfilment of such a project. Participants’ accounts show however how these hopes do not preclude the possibility for negotiation, with these young women being able in fact to advance their own aspirations.

While ‘known routes’ were especially common among the aspirations expressed by respondents and their parents, some also mentioned considering more unusual and less ‘tested’ trajectories. Rani was one of these women. Like all of those who were envisaging a career that no one else in their families had yet undertaken, her story underscores the key input provided by external sources of social and cultural capital:

I am very interested in […] the journalism aspect of science. […] It was only after I started to study it that I realised how very complex it is and how statistics itself can be used in so many forms and ways. […] I do know someone who studied medicine and then she studied social work. And now she’s doing a lot of work related to the journalism aspect of it. […] Before I used to think it would be a field that would be very difficult for at least a Muslim woman to get into because it involves you being so, you know, mobile and all of that, but I think seeing her, it was kind of encouraging. (Rani, middle-class; Russell Group 1, BSc Biology)

In describing how she became interested and started seeing herself in a profession that focused on science communication, Rani refers in particular to what she had learned throughout university and to a friend of hers doing a similar job. The latter, especially, was crucial in making this possibility seem for Rani more concretely viable, as she represented an example of someone ‘like her’ who was able to succeed in that profession, acting therefore to build her confidence and serving as encouragement in the face of expected difficulties.

Aspirations and self-identification

The way in which the experiences of people ‘like us’ importantly functioned to frame ‘horizons for action’ by making certain routes look more or less within one’s reach came up throughout interviewees’ narrations as a recurrent and meaningful theme, which attests to the need to ensure a diversity of backgrounds in all sectors and at all levels of employment. Hamida’s and Zainab’s extracts, reported below, provide illuminating examples of how the lack of representation of social categories with which one identifies (in terms e.g. of gender, ‘race’, ethnicity, and class) can lead to construct given fields as ‘not for us’ and to anticipate discrimination, deterring therefore from the undertaking of related pathways. In this sense, they shed light on some of the ways in which dynamics of self-exclusion can operate at a psychological level, bringing one ‘to exclude oneself from the […] places […] from which one is excluded’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 174). Their quotes are additionally illustrative of how the experience of people with whom one identifies can work on the converse to animate interest, as they increase one’s perceived capacity to succeed. As happened for Hamida, in those cases where these people were part of one’s social network they also had the significant function of opening access to relevant information:

I didn’t even know you get scholarships for PhDs. I thought like you got to be really wealthy to do one of them things. […] I didn’t even know people from like her [working-class] background, like our background, would be able to do that. […] But then the way she spoke about it it’s just made it more simpler and easier. Like, you know: ‘you can do it, you can do it’ sort of thing and it’s like: ‘you know what, maybe I can’. (Hamida, working-class; Ex-polytechnic 2, BSc Biomedicine)

I was worried about what my career aspirations would be [going to this university], what am I going to do with this degree, but now that I’ve studied it and got into it I’ve grown to like it. For example, we went on a trip to […] a big industrial company. […] We didn’t see any female employees, just one, and she was an ex-alumni so it was quite nice it was like: ‘oh actually people do well from this uni’, and then I felt more optimistic about it. (Zainab, middle-class; Ex-polytechnic 3, BSc Biochemical Engineering)

Interestingly, the concerns expressed by Zainab in this latter excerpt flag up a less obvious but still important dimension of self-identification, which has to do with the university attended and with its prestige. Here, it can be seen how symbolic violence constructing certain institutions as of lesser value takes its toll on students, as value judgements are internalised and become part of self-understandings. Bourdieu (1990: 135) writes in this respect that ‘individuals or groups are objectively defined not only by what they are but by what they are reputed to be’, with this depending on both ‘material properties’, and on ‘symbolic properties which are nothing other than material properties when perceived and appreciated […] as distinctive properties’. The symbolic value that is attributed to individuals’ properties, including formal qualifications, varies in relation to their position in social space, with those associated to dominant groups being attributed higher value. Symbolic violence is the process through which these arbitrary hierarchies of value are normalised and integrated in common, taken-for-granted beliefs (Bourdieu’s ‘doxa’), thereby contributing to legitimise the power of certain groups over others (Bourdieu, 2002: 167). In observing how the internalisation of dominant attributions of value might have precluded Zainab from contemplating potential career options, had she not been reassured by the presence in the workplace of ‘someone like her’, we can recognise the concrete risk of ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ that symbolic violence carries with it. As students of working-class origins and those from most minority ethnic backgrounds tend to be over-represented in ‘new’, generally less prestigious universities (Boliver, 2013), they are especially vulnerable to such a risk. Exposing the socially constructed nature of discourses of value, and the structural inequalities in which they are grounded, becomes therefore imperative in order to counter these subtle mechanisms of hierarchical reproduction.

As highlighted by Jamila, the under-representation in certain employment sectors of people ‘like us’ can additionally generate substantial tensions between one’s desire to work and progress in those sectors, and the wish to maintain gendered, racialised and classed identities:

I would like to be able to grow and develop, but not have to change myself as whole basically. […] I think firstly just as a woman I suppose, […] but also as an ‘ethnic minority’ […] I wouldn’t want to be undermined just because there are, you know, white male middle-class people in the same jobs or something. (Jamila, working-class; Russell Group 2, BA English Literature)

This quote is profoundly revealing of the strains and contradictions with which the career hopes and expectations of women and people from minority ethnic backgrounds are fraught. Jamila voices here her concern with finding a work environment which enables her to ‘be herself’, one where she does not have to ‘change herself as a whole’ in order to ‘fit in’ and be treated fairly. In explaining such concern, she refers to the potential discrimination that she feels she might face as a woman of minority ethnic – and I would add of working-class – origins in a predominantly white male middle-class environment.

Actualising aspirations

The discussion so far conducted highlights how the ability to access and benefit from various sources of social and cultural capital fundamentally influences employment opportunities and outcomes. For those who are of the first generation in their family to enter higher education and the graduate job market, sources beyond one’s family networks, such as those that can be provided by schools, universities, extracurricular activities and work experiences, are especially crucial. Even for students of minority ethnic origins coming from what can be considered as middle-class families, moreover, family networks appear to grant less exposure than those of their white British middle-class peers to social capital that can effectively aid the securement of a varied range of occupations. This can be related both to the recency of their becoming part of the ‘British middle-class’, which in the case of participants to this research only dated back to one generation, and to the relative position of different ethnic groups in the labour market field, with a still limited presence of middle-class professionals from minority ethnic backgrounds across different sectors of employment.

Institutions and practitioners involved with education and skills training appear therefore to have a substantial responsibility, both in enabling young people’s ‘capability to aspire’ and in increasing their ‘capability to realise aspirations’ (Baillergeau et al., 2015; Hart, 2013). Raising awareness of possible career and study options, and promoting ‘experimentation’ so that students can actually see themselves as pursuing (or not pursuing) them, is an important first step in this direction. As well as ensuring that students of all backgrounds take advantage of these opportunities, however, it is also necessary to provide them with the tools for actualising aspirations. A sense of the difference that this can make in terms of outcomes can be grasped by confronting Kanta’s and Farhan’s stories, which highlight the positive impact that effective capacity building and concrete directions for the steps to follow can have in bettering the chances of securing a certain career:

I did an internship in the charity sector last summer and that really kind of helped me to realise that that’s the sort of work I want to do. […] I think it was very much that internship itself, being in the organisation and seeing the sort of struggles that they have to deal with first hand and also speaking to experts in the field essentially, and networking with people who have gone through that process themselves. (Kanta, working-class; Russell Group 3, BSc Government and Economics)

I just started a project which basically involves a lot of researching into just things.[…] So I got into it and I really enjoyed myself doing it and I can see myself working as a researcher now.

Would you know how to pursue that route?

I do and I don’t. I know that you have to have good grades. […] Experience wise I don’t have a clue but yeah. I am still in two minds [the other option being teaching], it’s just another kind of stem of ideas which I have. (Farhan, working-class; Ex-polytechnic 2, BA Sociology)

Like Farhan, other young women also mentioned considering teaching as a ‘back up plan’, which suggests that ‘known routes’, while not always being the preferred option, might still be pursued where these tools have not been provided.

Conclusions

This article has aimed to analyse and elucidate some of the ways in which multiple dimensions of social identity such as class, ‘race’, ethnicity and gender concur to inform the educational and employment aspirations and pathways of British-born female undergraduate students of Bangladeshi heritage. I have suggested that Bourdieu’s concept of habitus might be usefully applied as an explanatory framework through which salient features of aspirations can be made visible, and have illustrated this through examples. The framing of aspirations as an aspect of habitus and the discussion conducted through these lenses have brought to attention and allowed light to be shed on the following elements: the links between individual and collective experiences, the interconnection of past, present and future in discourses and practices, and the ways in which the latter are affected by different endowments of economic, social and cultural capital. I have argued that class, ethnicity, religious faith and gender all intersect with one another in shaping aspirations and the capacity to realise them as they inform self-perceptions and understandings of the context, as well as influencing access to specific capital which can be utilised in the education and labour market fields. In this sense, the Bourdieusian perspective adopted has enabled us to recognise the key role of unequal social structures in shaping the formation and actualisation of young people’s aspirations. Firstly, as these structures function to systematically favour or curtail individuals’ access to different economic, social and cultural resources depending on their classed, racialised, ethnicised and gendered positionings. Secondly, as they affect the value that is attributed to these resources in various educational and employment environments.

Findings show that the young women who participated in this study attributed a strong value to education and held high aspirations. They also illustrate how these views were grounded in, and supported by, specific interpretations of ‘what people like us do’, where the ‘like us’ took ethnicised, racialised, religious, classed, and gendered connotations. Largely contributing to build these constructions were recollections of past and present experiences of more or less directly known people with whom they could somehow relate, and the examples that these provided. Participants’ discourses of valuing education and social mobility can be seen as ‘diasporic’ (Archer and Francis, 2006, 2007; see also Feliciano and Lanuza, 2016, 2017), as they build on and speak to the experiences and struggles of Bangladeshi immigrants and their descendants, presenting aspiration and achievement within and beyond higher education as ‘something that we – as Bangladeshis living in the UK – do’. The examples and resources made available by those with whom one identifies, because of their gender, class, ‘race’, ethnicity, religion but also institution and course of studies attended, were also crucial in informing career aspirations and the capacity to bring them to fruition. Participants’ accounts highlight how these elements worked together to structure their ‘horizons for action’ (Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997), by increasing awareness of possible routes and of how to pursue them, and by producing anticipations of (un)feasibility and of potentially (not) ‘fitting in’ at certain job environments. Access to relevant information and social networks was additionally essential in improving the ability to secure employment positions and work experience.

These considerations indicate that ‘widening participation’ in higher education, even in the most prestigious institutions, is still not enough to level the playing field in the competition for graduate employment. For students from minority ethnic backgrounds, of both middle-class and especially working-class origins, family networks do not provide the same access as those of their white British middle-class peers to the mainstream cultural and social capitals that enable effective navigation of the labour market, and which have been shown to be often more significant than educational qualifications in securing jobs (Burke, 2015). To improve the prospects of students of working-class and minority ethnic backgrounds it is therefore essential that they can take full advantage of extracurricular activities and professional experiences which are meaningful and relevant, and more guidance on the pathways that can be followed for specific careers appears to be needed. It is also maintained that the pursuit of a better ‘fit’ between individuals of various socio-economic origins and different education and employment contexts, which is necessary for a more equitable participation, requires that these environments become more open to, and start valuing more, different social identities and the multiple cultural resources they bring with them. This does not just apply to education and employment in general, but also to the specific institutions and areas where given genders, social classes and ethnicities are less represented (Archer et al., 2013; Gamsu and Donnelly, 2017; Reay et al., 2005). Increasing the presence of people from a diversity of backgrounds at all levels of employment within work places, including universities, is in this sense not only an end to itself, but also the means through which further opening can be brought about, by providing examples of ‘people like us’ and by taking on board the experiences and perspectives they make available.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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