Parámetros de eficacia de la actividad bactericida

Only in imaginary experience (in the folk tale for example), which neutralizes the sense of social realities, does the social world take the form of a universe of possibles equally possible for any possible subject. Agents shape their

aspirations according to concrete indices of the accessible and the inaccessible of what is and is not ‘for us’.

(Bourdieu, 1990: 64)

Here Bourdieu eloquently reminds us that young people do not construct their aspirations in isolation from their situations. According to this school of research social class is a force which impacts upon young people’s perceptions of the possibilities for their future, which in turn influences their dreams, hopes and subsequently their plans. As with aspirations, policy assumptions of free choice tend to overlook the structural inequality underlying the decision making process. Stephen Ball and colleagues (2002) argue that young people’s choices cannot be isolated from their context: ‘The capacity for choice is unevenly

distributed across the social classes’ (Ball et al., 2002: 66). Hodkinson and colleagues (1996) argue that the belief that young people’s transitions are characterised by free individual choice is a myth:

The whole of transition to work is permeated by structural and cultural factors. Consequently, the belief in largely free individual choice, upon which much current policy is based, is therefore, a myth that is either breathtakingly naïve or sinister.

(Hodkinson et al. 1996: 155)

This section will critically engage with the literature which has demonstrated how

aspirations and ‘choice’ are influenced by structural class background through the habitus. The discussion of the nature in which ‘choices’ are constrained is situated within a

36

Bourdieu’s notion of habitus15_{. RAT positions the individual as a rational agent who makes}

educational choices by weighing up the costs and benefits of each option in order to maximise utility (Breen and Goldthorpe, 1997). This is very much in line with the

governments focus on raising aspirations discussed above; inherent in this discussion is the argument that the solution lies with the providing of greater incentives for- and

information about- HE, such that the rational agent can make an ‘informed’ decision about their future. Reay et al. (2005) comment that this account of the student as a rational chooser removes emotion from the decision making process. Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, allows for emotion and agency whilst still accounting for the structural way in which disadvantaged positions in social space contribute to inequality. As such it has been found to be extremely useful for thinking through the way in which both structure and agency play a role in the self-exclusion of working-class students from HE (Reay et al., 2005). (For further discussion of the way in which habitus has been used see Reay, 2004). Thus I have found habitus a more helpful concept than RAT to understand how young people conceive of their futures and make plans to work towards reaching them.

Bourdieu argues that a correlation between an individual’s chances of attaining a goal and their aspirations for this goal does not occur due to rational calculation of their likelihood of success. Rather he argues that it is due to the dispositions of the habitus which are generated through socialisation in a particular field in relation to material circumstances. He writes:

The dispositions durably inculcated by the possibilities and impossibilities, freedoms and necessities, opportunities and prohibitions inscribed in the objective conditions…generate dispositions objectively compatible with these conditions and in a sense pre-adapted to their demands. The most improbable practices are therefore excluded, as unthinkable, by a kind of immediate

submission to order that inclines agents to make a virtue of necessity, that is, to refuse what is anyway denied and to will the inevitable.

(Bourdieu, 1990: 54)

15 _{It is relevant to note that these two theories are not entirely incompatible; indeed other work has}

demonstrated that they can be applied together. Glaesser and Cooper (2013) for example argue that young people engage in cost benefit rationalisations, but that they are structured within boundaries enforced by the habitus.

37

Thus we can begin to unpick the ways in which aspiration for a particular future and ‘choices’ or decision-making processes may be structured and constrained by material conditions of existence. The habitus allows us to uncover the ways in which, not only working-class young people’s aspirations may be constrained but also the way in which middle/upper class young people’s decisions to enter HE are often a ‘non choice’ arising from their dominant position in social space, a kind of natural progression (Reay et al., 2005). Drawing from this theoretical position, many studies have documented the way in which this occurs. Possibly the most commonly cited and influential of these is Reay and colleagues study of university applicants from different schools and class backgrounds (Reay et al., 2001; Reay et al., 2005). This work documents the complex ways in which university choice is structured by material and psychological constraints as some universities become ruled out as ‘not for the likes of us’ (Reay et al., 2001; 2005):

Choice for a majority involved either a process of finding out what you cannot have, what is not open for negotiation and then looking at the few options left, or a process of self-exclusion. One working class student claimed to have ‘a choice of one’.

(Reay et al., 2005: 85)

Work by Archer and colleagues (2007) is also revealing of the processes underlying the construction of certain futures as unobtainable. They argue that working-class pupils’ attempts to generate symbolic recognition through investments in stylistic displays resulted in them being othered by teachers; positioned as lacking intelligence and unlikely to

progress to HE. Moreover they discuss the way in which these young people’s investments in ‘style’ resulted in a view of HE as ‘not for them’. This was partially due to the same processes of exclusion through the habitus discussed by Reay et al. (2005), but was also due to a desire to purchase the goods necessary to maintain this symbolic capital within their peer group. This was seen as incompatible with student life which was characterised by debt and a lack of immediate income. As such they envisioned leaving school to enter the labour market and earn money as soon as possible (Archer et al., 2007).

Other work illustrates something of the deeply psychological and painful ways in which the habitus structures aspirations. Archer and Yamashita (2003) discuss the ways in which the young people in their study closed the door on certain futures seeing them as entirely out of reach. They argue that they not only ‘knew their place’, but also ‘knew the limits of their place’:

38

The young people understood the edges or horizons of these areas to be bounded by dense, impermeable limits, which were constructed through a complex interplay of social identities and inequalities of ‘race’, class and gender.

(Archer and Yamashita, 2003: 67)

This echoes the findings of Hodkinson et al. (1996) regarding the way in which young people’s horizons for action structured their decision making process:

Young people make career decisions within their horizons for action, which incorporate externally located opportunities in the labour market as well as the dispositions of habitus…Horizons for action enable the choice of some careers but prevent the choice of others.

(Hodkinson et al., 1996: 149-150)

I find this concept of the horizon for action to be a useful tool to operationalise habitus and consider the ways in which ideas of the future are structured by it. Following

Hodkinson and colleagues Ball et al. (2000) found that the young people in their study were similarly aware of- and making choices from within- their horizons for action (perceptions of the possible). The young people denied ambitions that they had due to an understanding of what is not possible for them. The authors problematize the concept of ‘choice’

stressing the limitations and constraints young people faced when making post-16 choices. They argue:

All of this makes the notion of ‘choice’ post-16 highly complex. The social trajectories and ‘learning careers’ of those young people and many of the others in our cohort, are constituted as much by chance and risk as they are by rational deliberation and effort. False starts seem almost the norm, set-backs are common and the social and domestic aspect of ‘choice-making’ are often more important than the educational.

(Ball et al., 2000: 40)

Roberts and Evans (2012) similarly argue aspirations are not always active decisions, but rather hopes influenced by the reality of a situation. Thus, in opposition to the political rhetoric regarding widening access to HE which places at the heart of it a commitment to ‘raising aspirations’ through providing more information at the end of compulsory

schooling; there is a need to look more closely at the processes at work throughout education which may serve to create systems of advantage or disadvantage for different young people.

39

This may be by way of positioning certain routes to adulthood as inconceivable or indeed through rendering certain routes out of reach due to particular structural obstacles such as educational attainment. It could be argued that the neoliberal individualistic focus on raising aspirations is an inadequate attempt to treat the outcome of inequality not the root of it, namely the material and structural conditions of existence which serve to create a situation whereby one culture is arbitrarily positioned as superior and university is seen as unattractive and out of reach for some.

This thesis explores the way in which young people’s horizons for action are constructed and managed through processes within schools. In this way I build upon existing research by extending the focus to look more broadly at how habitus, aspirations and ‘choices’ interact with educational institutions, how they are responded to by educators and in turn how these may be shaped and moulded by interventions in schools. The processes by which aspirations are ‘constructed’ and ‘managed’ in different contexts can be usefully unpacked with the conceptual tools provided by Pierre Bourdieu. How do different forms of aspiration connect to strategies of advantage/disadvantage? What happens to these aspirations when they interact with the educational system? How are middle-class aspirations cultivated?

Some literature has looked at the interactions between aspirations and institutions. For example Allen (2013) as has been mentioned above, explores the way in which young people’s aspirations are realigned following institutional judgement. Spohrer (2015) discusses the other end of this, considering how young people internalise aspirational messages sent off by their schools and how this in turn affects their aspirations. These studies are a useful starting point however there is a need to build upon this sort of work through considering the middle classes experiences alongside the working classes. The majority of research looking specifically at young people’s aspirations has focussed on those from working-class backgrounds. My research explores how middle-class aspirations are constructed and considers this in relation to the working-classes. In so doing I able to explore the power relations involved in this; unpacking how privilege or disadvantage may be functioning and being reproduced in these contexts.

Whilst the aforementioned literature provides a useful starting point for this thesis, the majority of it has focussed on young people’s aspirations at a fixed point in time (excluding St Clair et al., 2013 and Archer et al., 2014 which were longitudinal); my research emerges from a need to further explore the way in which aspirations are formed throughout different stages. I am uniquely incorporating young people at earlier stages in their

40

schooling (see Chapter 3 for more details). It also differs in that I am beginning this research within a vastly different context. More than ten years have passed since the

publication of the influential work on university choice by Reay and colleagues (2001; 2005) yet it seems as though not much has changed (Reay, 2014). This research emerges out of a need to revisit the issues they explored ten years later and in a somewhat different context of an increased financial burden for attending HE coupled with an apparent diversification of school types.