The temporality and intersectionality of social mobility trajectories: Pathways into (and out of) nursing

There is a growing heterodoxy of sociological social mobility scholarship which offers an alternative to dominant research and policy paradigms. This article aims to develop this body of literature through qualitative case study analysis of two young women – one upwardly mobile, one socially stable – and their classed and gendered trajectories into (and potentially out of) the nursing profession. Bourdieu’s theory of practice provides a framework for understanding the temporality and the intersectionality of these trajectories. Data are drawn from a project on the experiences of final year BSc Nursing students in England during the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. The narratives presented in this article are drawn from two interviews which included the production of a ‘lifeline’ to prompt the story of the participants’ lives so far, and their hopes for the future. Employing this tool as part of a case study approach offers an appreciation of the temporal ordering of a biography, as well as highlighting key life events in the context of an overall trajectory. The analysis highlights the workings of capital, habitus and field in shaping these young women’s lives, along with their investments in the illusio of higher education and experiences of symbolic violence. By exploring their past, present and imagined futures at a time of crisis, the analysis considers the temporality of practice and demonstrates how accumulated intersectional inequalities over the lifecourse shape how individuals can deal with disjuncture.