Resumo

PEREZ EXPOSITO, Leonel. ¿Estudiar para emigrar o estudiar para transformar? Un acercamiento etnográfico a la erosión del significado de los estudios superiores como mecanismo meritocrático de movilidad social. Argumentos (Méx.) [online]. 2010, vol.23, n.62, pp.131-156. ISSN 0187-5795.

Based on an ethnographic research, this paper gets into how a group of high school students constructs meaning around their future studies. Drawing on the concepts of cultural flows and appropriation, it is shown that such a symbolic construction entails a contradiction. Throughout their school experience, students value academic continuity, especially through university; however, sometimes they have serious reservations about the benefits they will obtain in terms of social mobility, and sometimes they do believe in it. For some, getting away from this ambiguity, mean to emigrate somewhere else, where education and merit imply the possibility of ontaining a recognized and well paid job. Conversely, other students envisage alternative scenarios, as the development of new job fields linked to their local community, while, finally, in some other the contradiction remains unsolved. Thus, the article illustrates how a meaning which have made sense of schooling through time, is debilitated or replaced by these students, and how in certain rural areas young people do not find a place where carrying out what it is encouraged in school.

Palavras-chave : education; social mobility; cultural flows; appropriation; meaning.