Distancing to self‐protect: the perpetuation of inequality in higher education through socio‐relational dis/engagement

Abstract

This paper explores the social class‐differentiated behaviours of access and traditional‐entry students, based on a three‐year constructivist grounded theory study with 45 undergraduates at an Irish university. The participant groups behaved significantly differently within the socio‐relational realm, engaging in various forms of distancing behaviours motivated by a desire to self‐protect and based on perceived relative social positioning. The paper illustrates some ways in which both disadvantage and privilege are performed at the post‐entry stage in a widening participation context. It is argued that the ‘closure’ behaviours of class‐based groups constrain the building of social capital by working‐class students, thus potentially limiting the ability of widening participation policies in achieving equality goals.

Keywords:

• social class
• higher education
• widening participation
• social experience

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the anonymous referees for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper, and the study’s participants for their involvement in the research. The author would also like to gratefully acknowledge funding support from the National University of Ireland, Galway (Millennium Fund) and the National University of Ireland (Dr. Mary L. Thornton Scholarship in Education).

Notes

1. A discussion of the methodology employed in this study can be found in Keane (2009).

2. Round two was conducted with 21 of the original 45 participants.

3. The terminal school examination in Ireland.

4. In Ireland, eligibility for a maintenance grant is means‐tested, mostly based on parental income.

5. Eligibility for a medical card is means‐tested and based on ‘disposable’ income. Those who hold, or whose parents hold, a medical card (thus exempting them from most medical expenses) are exempt from the payment of the various State examination fees).

6. This information only emerged during the relevant interviews. I decided to keep the students in the study because I felt it would be inappropriate and insulting to exclude them because they received a grant. It had also been very difficult to recruit TE participants in general.

7. A ‘match’ for one male first‐year Commerce student was not found.

8. A pseudonym. Pseudonyms are also employed throughout in relation to student participants.

9. Similar to the United Kingdom’s ‘post 1992’ universities.

10. These were: ‘Disclosing access’, ‘Making friends and mixing with others (or not)’, ‘Seeing social class differences’, and ‘Seeing groups/cliques and ‘Dressing up’’ (cf. Keane 2009 ). Categories pertaining to participants’ overall orientations to HE, and their academic experiences, are developed elsewhere (Keane 2009, 2011).

11. The number refers to the year group of the participant at the time of that particular interview.

12. The use – by my participants – of labels such as ‘the Abercrombie and Fitch type of people’ and the ‘Plastics’ requires further research. While the former group involved both male and female students, the ‘Plastics’ label attributed to the relevant female students is arguably gendered in its particular re/presentation of femininity.

13. In terms of the way in which participants chose to re/present themselves to me in person, I too would not have included them in their categorisations of either the ‘Abercrombie and Fitch type of people’ or the ‘Plastics’. Over the course of my research, however, I observed students on campus who seemed to fit these descriptions.

14. Through their HE participation, the behaviour of the SLAs’ is akin to Parkin’s (1979) ‘usurpationary closure’, a strategy ‘characterised instead by an upward exercise of power … that is oriented towards gaining advantages from the dominant group’ (Morrow and Torres 1995, 204).