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

"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"-- Provided by publisher Half Title 2 Series Page 3 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 Series Editors’ Foreword 9 Acknowledgments 10 Abbreviations 11 Introduction 12 Proud as Punch 12 Place and Experiences of Living in Western Sydney 16 Contextualization of Western Sydney 16 Perceptions of Western Sydney 18 Higher Education and Western Sydney 20 Researching Class, Place, and Higher Education 23 Book Outline 27 Chapter 1: Homely Mobility: Rethinking Bourdieu 32 Introduction 32 Bourdieu, Higher Education, and Symbolic Power 34 Place and Mobilities 41 On the Accumulation of Being: The Philosophical Dimensions of Bourdieu’s Work 44 On Homely Mobility: Domus and Domunis 47 Conclusions 55 Chapter 2: University and the Promise of a Good Life 58 Introduction 58 Emplacing Visions of a Good Life 61 Cranebrook, NSW, Australia, 2749, Population 15,759 61 A Statistical Portrait of Cranebrook 63 Cranebrook, Class, and Distinction 66 University and a Good Life to Come 72 Family, Place, and the Desire for Economic Security 72 School, “Miss Harris,” and Hope in Place 77 Ambivalence, Alternatives, and a Good Life 79 Conclusions 82 Chapter 3: Feeling “At Home” at University 84 Introduction 84 The “More Homely Feel”: Placial Degrees of Integration 86 “Homegrown”: The Accumulation of Academic Capacities 91 Precarious Recognitions: Settings and Symbolic Violence 94 Multicultural “Enrichment” 97 “Cocoons” and “Comfort Zones”: Desiring Discomfort 99 Conclusions 106 Chapter 4: The Graduate Waiting Room 108 Introduction 108 “Compensatory Strategies” 110 Persevering 110 Moving On 113 Cruel Attachments 120 Reconfiguring Class Identities and Social Mobility 126 Conclusions 129 Chapter 5: On the Social Gravity of People and Place 132 Introduction 132 Staying Put? 135 Intergenerational Criticisms 140 Gratitude to Place 144 Conclusions 151 Conclusions 154 Libido Academica, Libido Homeliness 154 Bringing It Back Home 159 Cranebrook, Penrith, and Beyond 165 Policy Recommendations 167 Final Comments 170 Notes 172 Introduction 172 Chapter 1 172 Chapter 2 173 Chapter 3 174 Chapter 4 174 Chapter 5 174 References 175 Index 186