Beyond the Cleft Habitus: Cultural Resistance and Study Methods in Upward Educational Mobility. An Autoethnographic Socioanalysis

Sociological literature on upward mobility has long highlighted the cleft habitus and the psychosocial unease experienced by working-class students navigating educational fields dominated by the middle class. This article challenges the assumption that these students must choose between total assimilation into middle-class culture or a defensive retreat into oppositional identities. By establishing a dialogue between Bourdieusian theory and British Cultural Studies – specifically through the work of Stuart Hall – the article proposes a further possibility that goes beyond recent neo-Bourdieusian concepts such as ‘social limbo’ or a ‘chameleonic attitude’. Moving from an auto-socioanalytical perspective, it explores how a relevant cultural innovation occurs through a reconversion not only of capitals but also of habitus, managing structural tension through a deeper process of cultural translation rooted within specific sociohistorical and institutional frameworks. The article extends Bourdieu’s premise that dispositions can modify themselves through encounters with new fields, demonstrating how the tension between rupture and continuity can trigger a generative change. This process can lead to a reading that distances itself from ideologically preferred institutional messages, implying a creative transformation of the habitus itself. Ultimately, while institutions encode promises, mobile agents can recode them to achieve a ‘change without betrayal’. In this way, mastering official knowledge does not necessitate a betrayal of origins; rather, the working-class habitus is proactively sutured into a heretical, reflexive and coherent cultural synthesis.