Belonging and Boundaries at an Elite University

• In Event: Higher Education, Mobility, and Stratification

Abstract

Drawing on 103 interviews with undergraduates at an elite university, we examine how students’ diverse trajectories to college modulate the relationship between social class and sense of belonging. We find that, while upper-income students located commonalities between themselves and college peers and integrate into the community, lower-income students’ varying trajectories to college differentially affected their sense of belonging through the boundaries they drew between themselves and their peers and judgements about whether to integrate or withdrawal from the campus community. By detailing this overlooked diversity among lower-income undergraduates, our findings expand theoretical frameworks for sense of belonging to include boundary work and agendas, thereby deepening our understanding of the reproduction of inequality in college.

Authors

• Zennon Black, Harvard University
  Presenting Author

• Anthony Abraham Jack, Boston University
  Presenting Author