Adult educational ‘lateness’ norms: hysteresis in mid-career retraining in law

Abstract

Mid-career men and women professionals describe their pervasive sense of ‘lateness’ retraining in law. Against industry patterns of lawyers wishing to leave the profession, these individuals had chosen to assert or reassert a desire to become lawyers partway through existing careers. What cultural narratives mediate the process of making this professional career shifts? In contrast to younger students, these ‘later’ career changers differed in career experiences and expected career trajectories. They all spoke about their personal sense of career lateness relative to time-flow norms, but only some reflected on the subsequent implications of their career shift. Interviewees worked in Victoria, Australia and in New Zealand. This article applies Bourdieu’s concept of hysteresis to career lateness along with other career transition concepts to explore career changers’ internal disquiet about their ‘off time’ career transitions. Perceptions of career lateness – hysteresis in Bourdieu’s terms – arise from changing fields, losing/re-positioning occupational capital or stretching between old and new habitus in their post-transition career as lawyers or work using their new law degrees.