Habitus and intraclass differentiation: nonuniversity‐bound students in Japan

This paper explores the mechanisms guiding differentiation among nonuniversity‐bound high schoolers from disadvantaged families in their job decision making and acquisition. Examining microlevel schooling processes over one year, it is argued that one differentiation mechanism is the individual's varying perceptions and consequent uses of school‐based resources that, in principle, are available to all within the school but, in reality, are not fully utilized by all. The paper then seeks to explain the mechanisms whereby these variations emerge and draw upon habitus as an analytical tool. It suggests that variations result from an interaction of individual habitus (within the “collective” habitus of nonuniversity‐bound students) and available resources (family‐based and school‐based) and that the ways in which these resources are presented to individual students are influential. School and family can in fact “intervene” in the student's perception and activation of the resources. The highly structured practice of job referral in Japan, where each school provides students with job opportunities, illuminates variability in students’ uses of school‐based resources.