Rural students’ experiences in a Chinese elite university: capital, habitus and practices

Drawing on a qualitative case study and deploying Bourdieu’s thinking tools, this article attempts to understand rural students’ subjectivities and practices in a Chinese elite university, relating the types and volumes of capital they possessed to the process of position-takings. It contextualises their experiences against the backdrop of the rural–urban divide in China and the great educational inequality thus entailed. Rurality in the metropolitan space resulted in a strong feeling of being out of place. Lack of the legitimate cultural forms, together with pervasive financial constraints, constituted a major cause of frustration and alienation for these former academic stars. Exclusion and self-exclusion from the ‘consecrated’ culture, high-status societies and social activities further handicapped their acquisition of valued capitals. Under such conditions, rural participants produced diversified strategies and practices, through which we catch a glimpse of their evolving habitus.