Volunteering is perceived as benefiting youth by facilitating university entry and access to better employment. However, little empirical evidence exists to show whether such perceptions are justified. Therefore, this article presents data on volunteering and attainment from a representative sample of Australians who were born around 1990 and participated in the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Youth between 2006 and 2016. Supplementing results of two-level hierarchical models involving person-year data with insights from several in-depth interviews, we argue that Bourdieu’s theory of social practice is a fruitful framework for understanding how volunteering affects university participation and occupational status of young people. Volunteering provides gains, but they are not large enough to view it as an instrumental means which young people use to advance their educational and employment prospects. Rather, volunteering can be considered as a form of cultural capital which is beneficial but enacted for reasons other than extrinsic rewards.

中文翻译：

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礼物作为收获？志愿服务对澳大利亚年轻人教育和职业成就的影响

志愿服务被认为通过促进大学入学和获得更好的就业机会使青年受益。然而，几乎没有经验证据表明这种看法是否合理。因此，本文提供了来自 1990 年左右出生并参加了 2006 年至 2016 年澳大利亚青年纵向调查的澳大利亚人的代表性样本的志愿服务和成就数据。 对涉及人年数据的两级层次模型的结果进行补充并提供见解通过几次深度访谈，我们认为布迪厄的社会实践理论是一个富有成效的框架，可以用来理解志愿服务如何影响年轻人的大学参与和职业地位。志愿服务带来收获，但他们的规模还不够大，无法将其视为年轻人用来提高教育和就业前景的工具。相反，志愿服务可以被视为一种文化资本形式，它是有益的，但不是出于外在奖励的原因而制定的。