Examining How Class and Rurality Affect Regional and Rural Youth Experiences at an Urban University

• In Event: Building Pathways: Class, Rurality, and Belonging in Higher Education

Abstract

In this research I explore how youth from regional, rural and remote (RRR) areas experience higher education in a metropolitan institution in Australia. I examine their university experience, how it is shaped by the institution, as well as how students’ rural subjectivity and identity fits, adapts or is challenged in this new environment. The data draws 23 semi-structured interviews with RRR youth at an urban university. Overall, I found that while RRR youth were generally satisfied with their experiences in higher education they felt that class and place played a role in the misrecognition and stigmatization by other more privileged students and the institution of their rural working-class ways of being.

Author

• Hernan Cuervo, University of Melbourne