Identities, cultural capital, educational choices and post-communist transition : an ethnographic study of Georgian youth

Abstract

This paper summarizes a qualitative study of the educational decision-making of adolescents with diverse backgrounds in the post-Soviet republic of Georgia. The results suggest that a set of institutional factors force young people with certain backgrounds to drop out of school at an early stage, even when alternative education or labour market options are not available for them. The absence of fear of downward mobility among some parents may be helping to increase educational inequality. Parental motivation can be seen as a form of capital that is particularly valued by teachers, who attenuate aspirations of those students whose parents lack it and encourage them to leave the system.