Locality and gendered capital of working-class youth

Abstract

This article is based on a study of social and spatial transitions of about 20-year-old young people in four different sites in Finland. The data consist of 61 interviews, and in this article four case studies are presented. I analyse young people’s social class and family background, as well as the cultural and social capitals (Bourdieu, 1986), which I assume to be mediated through gender and locality (Skeggs, 1998). Also I will inspect Coleman’s argument (1988) that social capital and cultural (i.e. human) capital are strongly connected with each other. The data agree with many previous studies and indicate that working-class young people tend to choose similar types of occupation as their parents, many are likely to stay in the local community in future, and social capital is very important while achieving cultural capital and education. However, there are great differences in the ways working-class youth make use of their cultural and social capitals, so we must analyse carefully the emotional, social, local and material conditions of young women and men in order to understand their gendered life histories and educational choices.