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Career and education strategies of young adults in Croatia: the role of capitals and habitus in transitions to employment

Stable employment has become hard to attain for many young people in Western societies and their transitions to work increasingly insecure (Woodman & Wyn, 2015 ; ILO, 2014 ; Standing, 2011). In a country with one of the highest youth and young adult unemployment rates in the European Union, Croatia, transition from education to employment is marked by long periods of job-seeking, short term jobs and underemployment (Matković, 2011). Along with the influences from macro-social factors, the transition from education to employment is an outcome of the young peoples’ long term education and career strategies as well as specific strategies in the process of seeking employment. Following Bourdieu (1997) we take strategies as part conscious, part pre- conscious and generated from the habitus. And as the social world is ‘accumulated history’ (Bourdieu, 1979 ; 1990) marked by inequalities and not everything is equally possible within, the young peoples’ strategies are not distributed randomly amongst the individuals. In this paper we aim to explore the education and career strategies of young people in Croatia from different social backgrounds, and how their habitus and unequal access to economic, social and cultural capital differentiate the transitions. To do so, we have reconstructed the field of social classes in Croatia with the Bourdieu-inspired Multiple Correspondence Analysis (Le Roux et al., 2008) using the data from a nationally representative survey. Typical households for every social fraction have been chosen and in-depth interviews with 15 young people who had finished education conducted, along with the separate interviews with their parents. That enables us to explore the role of reproduction of social inequalities in the transitions from education to employment as well as the forming of the strategies as interplay of family and young peoples’ habitus and capitals.

strategies, young adults, Bourdieu, inequality

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