Conference Agenda

In the context of the last decades, the study of the experiences of non-traditional students in higher education, including first-generation university students (FGUS), has accounted for a large part of the academic and research agenda (Espinoza et al., 2022; Flanagan-Bórquez et al., 2023; Gable, 2021; Isopahkala-Bouret et al., 2018).

FGUS are typically defined as those whose parents or guardians did not graduate from a post-secondary institution (Beattie, 2018; Ishitani, 2003). Specifically, research conducted in Latin America (LA) shows that FGSs share characteristics and needs compared to FGUSs in the global north. Oftentimes, FGS come from a lower socioeconomic status, graduate from primary and secondary schools with lower academic attainments, fulfill multiple roles while studying, have higher subject failure rates, and their families have less knowledge about how to support the educational trajectory of their children (Flanagan-Bórquez, 2017; Guzmán-Valenzuela et al., 2023; Morosini and Felicetti, 2019; Pataro, 2019; Webb, 2019).

These characteristics challenge FGUSs’ access to higher education, requiring greater family and external support to be able to access and persist in university (Segovia and Flanagan-Bórquez, 2019). Unlike European countries, some studies in LA (Guzmán-Valenzuela et al., 2022; Guerrero-Valenzuela et al., 2022) have shown some family challenges in persistence, including internal tensions occurring when one member becomes the first to attend university or when FGUS must migrate to a city other than their hometown while highlighting the role of the mother and her participation in the educational perspectives of FGUS, assisting them in choosing post-secondary institutions and accompanying them during the university entry process (Guzmán-Valenzuela et al., 2022). Compared to educational models in some European countries, access to LA higher education usually depends on FGUS’s economic capital (Guerrero-Valenzuela et al., 2022). In countries such as Denmark and Sweden, access to prestigious programs is less limited to students of professional parents with greater cultural capital (Thomsen, 2018; Isopahkala-Bouret et al., 2018). On the other hand, in some countries of LA, FGUS are less likely to be admitted in selective institutions, highlighting that university selection procedures are an important source of exclusion (Espinoza et al., 2022). Traditional approaches to FGUS in LA and Chile have focused on describing the experiences of the students and there is limited research on hidden curriculum regarding FGS and academics’ perspectives.

This qualitative study examines the transformation of aspirational capital and the emergence of symbolic mobility among first-generation university students (FGUS). Symbolic mobility is defined as the process through which a student acquires recognition, legitimacy, and a reconfiguration of their perceived social status through transformation of symbolic capital as a result of their university trajectory. The specific research questions were: What is the symbolic mobility aspiration of first-generation university students in Chile? What are the main differences in this aspiration regarding a Global and European context? Exploring this question contribute to gain situated knowledge about the symbolic meaning that FGUSs attribute to obtaining a university degree and their aspirations for social and professional recognition after completing their studies. In addition, this research contributes with empirical knowledge and a conceptual proposal that situates the symbolic capital of FGUSs as part of a broader set of aspirations.

The design of this qualitative research is informed by sociological frameworks drawing on the concepts of cultural, social, symbolic (Bourdieu, 1986), and aspirational capital (Yosso, 2005). Using the affordances of these range of conceptual tools this study seeks to critically analyze the nature of FGUS’s experiences, particularly seeking to understand the complex relationships of students with their own educational experiences, their symbolic capital, and its influence on intergenerational mobility aspirations.

Despite widening participation policies across Europe, students from marginalised backgrounds continue to face persistent barriers to participation, recognition, and belonging in higher education (Brown & Leigh 2018; Weiss 2021). Even where formal access has been achieved, higher education often remains an ambivalent space in which students are present without fully feeling entitled, recognised, or secure in their membership. Transitions into university thus constitute a critical fault line within education systems, where social, cultural, and symbolic boundaries are drawn, processes of social closure become visible, and belonging is actively negotiated (Cree et al. 2017; Gravett & Ajjawi 2022). Within these dynamics, institutional inequalities are not only reproduced but may also be reworked and unsettled (Petrik 2025).

This paper focuses on practices of belonging, and in particular on collective practices of engagement through which belonging is negotiated, produced, and sustained in everyday interactions in various higher education contexts. Rather than approaching belonging as an individual state that one either has or lacks, we conceptualise it as a situated and relational process that encompasses both the broader politics of belonging (Yuval-Davis 2011) and its experiential, lived, and affective dimensions (May 2011; Niemi 2025). The paper draws on empirical material from three European contexts: Finland, Germany, and Austria. By bringing together data from different education systems, the paper contributes to European debates on inequality and participation in higher education from a cross-national perspective. Together, we examine how students engage in collective practices through which spaces of belonging are created. Our empirical material therefore shifts attention from individual feelings of inclusion or exclusion to the collective work through which belonging is accomplished or challenged. Against this backdrop, the paper asks: How is belonging collectively negotiated, produced, and sustained in transitions into and through higher education, and through which practices do students create spaces of belonging? Through the analytical examples, we show how belonging is actively done through collective engagements that both navigate and reshape institutional contexts of higher education.

Theoretically, the paper adopts a relational perspective on belonging, understanding belonging as a process that emerges through social practices rather than as an individual attribute. We build on Cuervo and Wyn’s (2014) three-dimensional model of belonging, which conceptualises belonging through meaningful relationships, a sense of rootedness and place attachment, and belonging in one’s time. This framework allows us to analyse how belonging is negotiated across social relations, institutional spaces, and biographical horizons. In addition, the analysis is informed by a social-materialist perspective (Paananen & Grieshaber 2023; Gravet & Ajjavi 2021) that attends to the involvement of non-human actors, material arrangements, and institutional infrastructures (Star 1999) in the production of belonging. This perspective enables us to explore how atmospheres, artefacts, technologies, and organisational settings become integral to collective practices of belonging.