Megjelent Kovai Cecília, Puskás Fanni Mária és Szőke Alexandra tanulmánya a Journal of Intercultural Studies folyóiratban

Abstract

The article focuses on the inner tensions that arise from the dissonance of normative expectations of social advancement and limited structural opportunities. Grounded in Bourdieu’s theory, we contend that dispositions are shaped not only by objective structures but also by normative expectations. Due to historically grounded structural racism, people who belong to the Roma ethnicity in Hungary often struggle with the related mental distress, described as ‘divided habitus’. We highlight that such tensions are the lived experience of not only those who manage to socially advance, as previous research has thus far shown, but also of those who cannot. Focusing on the struggles of the ‘unsuccessful many’, the paper explores these inner tensions through the case of Rozika, a disadvantaged Roma girl. We show that Rozika faces the dual pressures of having to adjust to both her disadvantaged circumstances and normative expectation of social mobility, which however could lead to alienation from her current context. Whereas understanding individual trajectories within social structures is crucial to unraveling the complexities of social mobility, our analysis point beyond this individual case, suggesting that this double pressure might be present in different social positions affected by the normative expectations of social mobility.