Moving Beyond ‘Cheap Labour’: A Bourdieusian Analysis of Career Experiences and Trajectories of Vocational College Graduates in China

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the college‐to‐work transition of vocational college graduates, who are typically viewed as a homogeneous disadvantaged group. Drawing on Bourdieu's theories, this two‐wave panel study interviewed 33 Chinese vocational college graduates about their initial labour‐market experiences during their first year after graduation. This study reveals the heterogeneity and dynamics of four transitional patterns: dwelled, diverted, shifting and stuck, based on graduates' different degrees of field‐habitus congruence and major‐occupation match. This transition typology challenges oversimplified, often deficit‐based discourses of vocational graduates by illustrating how they perceive and engage with jobs differently. We also observe the self‐reinforcing tendency of graduates' career trajectories. The study challenges the conceptualisation of ‘successful’ and ‘problematic’ transitions, as normally measured by major‐job match, and suggests providing more targeted academic and career support to vocational students at an earlier stage, well before graduates form fixed career patterns.