The Music That Makes Me Move: Perceptions of Italian Regional Disparities among Music Students and Aspiring Cultural and Creative Workers
(2026) UTVK03 20261Sociology
- Abstract
- This thesis explores how music students and aspiring cultural and creative workers from Southern Italy perceive and negotiate Italian regional inequalities through educational mobility towards Centre-Northern regions. The aim of the present study is to delve deeply into the ways Italian regional disparities shape students’ decisions to move, their experiences within music higher education and their early career trajectories in the cultural and creative sector. The research is framed through core-periphery theory and the aspirations and capabilities model, which help explain mobility as both structurally constrained and personally aspired to; Bourdieu’s concepts of field and capital, used to explain the “rules of game” of the field of the... (More)
- This thesis explores how music students and aspiring cultural and creative workers from Southern Italy perceive and negotiate Italian regional inequalities through educational mobility towards Centre-Northern regions. The aim of the present study is to delve deeply into the ways Italian regional disparities shape students’ decisions to move, their experiences within music higher education and their early career trajectories in the cultural and creative sector. The research is framed through core-periphery theory and the aspirations and capabilities model, which help explain mobility as both structurally constrained and personally aspired to; Bourdieu’s concepts of field and capital, used to explain the “rules of game” of the field of the cultural and creative workers; and McRobbie’s work on passionate labour and self-entrepreneurship, which situates creative labour within neoliberal forms of flexibility and precariousness. Using a qualitative research design, the thesis is based on fourteen semi-structured interviews with Southern Italian students, graduates, teachers and early-career musicians. The findings show that mobility is often perceived as a necessary strategy to access better educational and professional opportunities, while music education itself can reproduce insecurity and vulnerability through bureaucratic constraints and consequent reinforcement of resource inequalities. (Less)
- Popular Abstract
- This thesis explores how music students and aspiring cultural and creative workers from Southern Italy perceive and negotiate Italian regional inequalities through educational mobility towards Centre-Northern regions. The aim of the present study is to delve deeply into the ways Italian regional disparities shape students’ decisions to move, their experiences within music higher education and their early career trajectories in the cultural and creative sector. The research is framed through core-periphery theory and the aspirations and capabilities model, which help explain mobility as both structurally constrained and personally aspired to; Bourdieu’s concepts of field and capital, used to explain the “rules of game” of the field of the... (More)
- This thesis explores how music students and aspiring cultural and creative workers from Southern Italy perceive and negotiate Italian regional inequalities through educational mobility towards Centre-Northern regions. The aim of the present study is to delve deeply into the ways Italian regional disparities shape students’ decisions to move, their experiences within music higher education and their early career trajectories in the cultural and creative sector. The research is framed through core-periphery theory and the aspirations and capabilities model, which help explain mobility as both structurally constrained and personally aspired to; Bourdieu’s concepts of field and capital, used to explain the “rules of game” of the field of the cultural and creative workers; and McRobbie’s work on passionate labour and self-entrepreneurship, which situates creative labour within neoliberal forms of flexibility and precariousness. Using a qualitative research design, the thesis is based on fourteen semi-structured interviews with Southern Italian students, graduates, teachers and early-career musicians. The findings show that mobility is often perceived as a necessary strategy to access better educational and professional opportunities, while music education itself can reproduce insecurity and vulnerability through bureaucratic constraints and consequent reinforcement of resource inequalities. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9248826
- author
- Aramu, Laura LU
- supervisor
-
- Uzma Kazi LU
- organization
- course
- UTVK03 20261
- year
- 2026
- type
- M2 - Bachelor Degree
- subject
- keywords
- Interregional student mobility, Southern Italy, regional inequalities, cultural and creative work, music higher education
- language
- English
- id
- 9248826
- date added to LUP
- 2026-08-24 08:59:40
- date last changed
- 2026-08-24 08:59:40
@misc{9248826,
abstract = {{This thesis explores how music students and aspiring cultural and creative workers from Southern Italy perceive and negotiate Italian regional inequalities through educational mobility towards Centre-Northern regions. The aim of the present study is to delve deeply into the ways Italian regional disparities shape students’ decisions to move, their experiences within music higher education and their early career trajectories in the cultural and creative sector. The research is framed through core-periphery theory and the aspirations and capabilities model, which help explain mobility as both structurally constrained and personally aspired to; Bourdieu’s concepts of field and capital, used to explain the “rules of game” of the field of the cultural and creative workers; and McRobbie’s work on passionate labour and self-entrepreneurship, which situates creative labour within neoliberal forms of flexibility and precariousness. Using a qualitative research design, the thesis is based on fourteen semi-structured interviews with Southern Italian students, graduates, teachers and early-career musicians. The findings show that mobility is often perceived as a necessary strategy to access better educational and professional opportunities, while music education itself can reproduce insecurity and vulnerability through bureaucratic constraints and consequent reinforcement of resource inequalities.}},
author = {{Aramu, Laura}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{The Music That Makes Me Move: Perceptions of Italian Regional Disparities among Music Students and Aspiring Cultural and Creative Workers}},
year = {{2026}},
}