Class, Place, and Higher Education: Experiences of Homely Mobility

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Higher education is seen to be a means to the good life and is a dominant way societies distribute hope for social mobility. But does higher education deliver on its promise This book attends to the hopes, experiences, and trajectories of working-class students and graduates from Western Sydney an area that is imagined, from the outside, to be a place of lack and stagnation, the other Sydney. This book challenges the myth that participation in higher education necessarily leads to upward social mobility and traces how the rewards of higher education are unevenly distributed. It considers how visions of a good life are class differentiated and makes an argument for the significance of place when examining experiences of higher education. Rather than focus on university as a means to becoming middle class, Class, Place, and Higher Education examines how university becomes a means to a good life, not the good life, a good life that is embedded in place, in working-class places like Western Sydney, and one that becomes more complex and ambivalent through the process of going to university. Through an attention to the existential and social dimensions of mobility, Alexandra Coleman develops the term homely mobility to describe the pull of people and place, and small-scale degrees of mobility in place to a better street, the suburb next door, the university down the road. Structural inequalities are an embodied dimension of social being and action, and through the lens of homely mobility, this book affords insights into broader processes of social reproduction and transformation.

Reviews

A beautifully written book that adds to our understanding of class, place and mobilities in higher education. The in-depth, insider exploration of student experiences challenges our assumptions and reminds us that university is just one path to a good life. Highly recommended for anyone working in higher education, urban planners and policy makers. * Amani Bell, Associate Professor, The University of Sydney, Australia *
A masterfully written book that manages to synthesise theory and lived experience in engaging and subtle ways rarely seen in academic monographs. * Educational Review *
Class, Place, and Higher Education is innovative, insightful, analytically rich, engaging, heartfelt and a fantastic read. It continues a strong tradition of using Bourdieus theories and concepts to understand and explain the role of social class in the experiences and outcomes of higher education, but advances the conversation by adding the important (but so far largely overlooked) element of space. In this respect, the book is breaking new ground and will be adding to scholarly debates on class and educational inequality in a meaningful and constructive way. * Wolfgang Lehmann, Professor, Department of Sociology, Western University, Canada *
Few scholars have written so eloquently on the ambivalence of the promise of a good life offered by universities to working class students. Drawing on a philosophical Bourdieu, Coleman captures incisively the push and pull of family, mobility and aspiration through her analyses of homely mobility and the gravity of place. Inspiring. * Greg Noble, Professor, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, Australia *

Author Bio

Alexandra Coleman is an E.G. Whitlam Research Fellow in the Whitlam Institute at Western Sydney University (WSU), Australia.