Crossing a social demarcation line: Students experience friction in the transformed Swedish higher education system

Abstract

One consequence of the widened participation in higher education (HE) is that the social demarcation line that once existed at the entrance to HE has moved inside the HE system. This study investigates how students experience social friction when demarcation lines are crossed and how such friction develops over time. This was achieved by repeated interviews with the same 10 HE students during their time at university. The study deploys habitus and hysteresis to explain how social dispositions from social origins are challenged but able to change when they are exposed to unfamiliar social situations. The study reveals how social friction in relation to both social background and to the HE system, progresses in terms of either fading or amplifying. These findings are concluded in a model that offers a systematic way of investigating how students experience HE over time in relation to social background.