Resignation of habitus: children’s lived experience in disadvantaged primary schools in Ireland

This paper presents the original theoretical concept of resigned habitus to explore how working-class students in DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) designated disadvantaged primary schools in Ireland navigate an educational system that privileges middle-class norms. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts, the research investigates how systemic school practices influence students to suppress their identities to achieve habitus-field congruence. This adaptation, while enabling conformity, has affective consequences – producing feelings of inferiority, anxiety, and disengagement. The paper draws from a narrative inquiry study with 41 pupils (aged 11–12) from three DEIS Urban Band 1 primary schools, using interviews and drawings to capture their lived experiences. Resigned habitus offers a deeper understanding of how class is experienced in disadvantaged primary schools, and how the internalisation of symbolic violence in everyday school interactions prompts an embodied affective response that sees some children hanging their habitus at the school gate.