Bourdieu’s Theory and Intersectionality: a New Conceptual Framework to Interpret Transition as Social Change of Youth Mobility. The Case of Young Italians

The paper is a contribution to the analysis of change processes within the multiple forms of youth transitions in the mobility field. To this end, a new conceptual framework is proposed based on the link between the Bourdieusian approach and that of intersectionality. This approach creates the opportunity to study the intersections between the categories of gender and socio-economic status with the Bourdieusian field, habitus and cultural/feminine capital, showing the dynamism of the intersections, mainly due to dysfunctional asymmetries between categories, which make the change in transition possible. The theoretical proposal was verified through empirical research carried out in London in 2019 which highlights how the change processes outline different transition metaphors (step by step, up and down, stop and go, up and down and then constantly increasing) characterized by non-linear trajectories, which are, however, almost always positive and increasing. The findings are based on an analysis of 51 in-depth narrative interviews with young Italians, aged between 18 to 35, who have been living in London for about 5 years on average.