Leaving Northern Ireland: youth mobility field, habitus and recession among undergraduates in Belfast

Abstract

This article explores the dichotomy between the high prevalence and low incidence of youth mobility intentions, utilising the results of quantitative and qualitative research conducted with 400 students during 2010 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Comparisons with results from a prior study on student mobility also show that the recent recession had made relatively little impact upon the prevalence of mobility intentions. Following a theoretical perspective influenced by Bourdieu, these findings are explained through an appreciation of habitus in transmitting the appropriate values and necessary social and economic resources to enable entry to what we have termed the mobility field. This conclusion also helps account for the disparity between the high prevalence of intentions to leave and the low incidence of concrete plans to leave Northern Ireland, as only a small number of respondents have learnt how to mobile via an informal process of family and peer socialisation.