A Bourdieusian study of white, working-class boys’ primary/secondary school transition within a deprived, semi-rural community in northern England.

This paper presents a Bourdieusian study of the disrupted transition experience from primary to secondary school (in a deprived, semi-rural area in the north of England) for five white, working-class boys (WWCBs), most of whom no longer attend their first secondary school. Their transition could be deemed to have failed; this was a recurrent phenomenon, affecting a small number of WWCBs within the context each year. Bourdieu’s conceptual tools (field, cultural capital and habitus) are applied both to data collection and critical analysis. Through interviews with WWCBs, parents and staff, this study examines the value-laden issues involved from multiple perspectives. In line with Bourdieusian thinking, participants’ testimony reveals how social agents’ actions and behaviours are shaped by the social structures they encounter, i.e., the focus schools operating within a neoliberalist education system. Findings expose the educational, cultural and social marginalisation of the WWCB participants resulting from their fragmented education experience (beginning at the point of transition), leading to no/low academic outcomes, criminality, substance abuse and challenges around employment. The negative effects of neoliberalism within education also emerge, as well as evidence of Stahl’s (2017) ‘pipeline to prison’ within the focus context. Application of Bourdieusian thinking (i.e., that western education systems serve to reproduce cultural and social inequality for working-class students) deepens theoretical understanding around a recurrent problem of social injustice. This is a localised study (with data collection taking place in the first half of 2023) and no claims of generalisation are made; however, the aim is that findings and conclusions will inform future discussion around transition (both locally and further afield).