Unseen Barriers in Higher Education: Conceptualizing and Measuring Cultural Struggles of College Students

• In Event: Culture, Social Class, and Identity Formation

Abstract

A growing body of qualitative research indicates that low-SES students often find themselves in the position of cultural outsiders in an elite academic milieu, which brings about extra socio-psycho hardships and remarkable disadvantages. However, no instrument is available yet to systematically measure such experience. The present study outlines an original attempt to conceptualize the cultural struggles into two distinct, yet interrelated dimensions: disembeddedness and disorientedness, respectively denoting the struggles caused by disjointedness between the habitus and field, and discontinuity between the past and the present habitus. An eight-item scale was constructed and validated in the context of China. The study makes a unique contribution to the literature on social mobility experiences via higher education.

Author

• Yajun Zheng, University of Hong Kong
  Presenting Author