Habitus in transition: class, migration and education in regional Australia

This paper examines how migrant mothers living in a regional Australian town negotiate class and moral value through their engagement with their children’s education. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and capital, extended through an intersectional lens, it explores how middle-class orientations formed prior to migration are reworked in contexts in which ethnicity, religion, gender and regionality shape opportunities. Education emerges as a moral and class project through which women seek to preserve dignity and status when professional mobility is restricted. The analysis reveals the continuity and transformation of habitus across borders and within regional life, showing how classed identities are reconfigured through the intersecting social and spatial conditions of settlement.