Migrating aspirations: Subjectivity shaped by a family's move

Abstract

This thesis explores the transformation of subjectivity within a migrating family from rural Okhaldhunga to urban Kathmandu through an autoethnographic lens informed by practice theory and Bourdieu’s conceptual triad of capital, habitus, and field. Drawing from personal narrative, family history, and theoretical inquiry, the study interrogates how economic, social, cultural, and symbolic capitals are reshaped across spatio–temporal transitions. It pays particular attention to intergenerational differences, educational trajectories, and the everyday practices that mediate the rural-urban shift in identity. The analysis reveals that migration not only repositions individuals within new social hierarchies but also transforms embodied dispositions — what Bourdieu terms habitus — into dynamic, adaptable forms responsive to shifting fields. While the older generation bore the impact of structural exclusion from education, the younger generation, including the author, emerged as agents of self-fashioning, negotiating the tensions between rural heritage and urban aspirations. Education, in this context, functions as both a site of constraint and possibility, where subjectivity is contested and reimagined. The study contributes to broader debates in migration studies and practice theory by demonstrating how lived experience complicates and expands existing understandings of habitus and agency. Through an embodied narrative grounded in Nepali socio-political history, this study situates the personal within the political, offering insights into the intimate effects of structural change and the recursive relationship between mobility and identity.