How free are young people to create themselves
and make individual and independent choices in modern society? Taking
young female students from rural areas in Norway as the empirical
point of departure, the article discusses their choice of higher
education and how they experience the consequences of their choices in
relation to formation of identity and in relation to their social and
geographical background. The students are situated in a point of
intersection between the modern ideology concerning creating oneself
by making individual choices, their social and geographical
background, and the Norwegian egalitarian ideology where equality is
understood as sameness. Disparity in educational level has increased
significance in creating social differences between women, differences
that are reinforced by geographical conditions. Choice of higher
education is a central element in creating oneself, and through their
choice of higher education the students are partly leaving their
social and geographical background. At the same time their background
is important for formation of identity, and the consequences of their
choice result in a feeling of ambivalence, particularly in relation to
management of the social and cultural differences that this choice
give basis for. Their experiences illustrate the importance of
analysing choices and formation of identity in a social, cultural and
geographical context related to continuity and tradition and not
focussing only individual freedom and change..