Rising educational inequality is considered as one pressing social problem in many national education systems. There is limited existing literature that examines how youth from different social backgrounds perceive and consider social inequalities and "justice." This study addresses this research gap by probing the perspectives of…

Previous studies have associated participation in higher education with the formation of middle-class advantages. Studies have shown that graduates from affluent family backgrounds gain more advantages from graduate degrees and secure better job opportunities than their less privileged counterparts. Drawing on the Bourdieusian framework, this…

The purpose of the article is to compare and contrast higher education and research among public relations and journalism students of middle-class and working-class origin. The paper applied Bourdieu's theory of "habitus" to analyze prejudices against the working class, explores whether working-class students express an anti-education…

How do educators reconcile the growing college-for-all norm--the notion that all students should pursue college--with the diverse needs of students in urban settings? What is the impact on Black students across social-class background? Using interviews and fieldwork with teachers, counselors, and diverse Black students in a large Californian high…

Based on an ethnographic study, this article presents the class-based disparities of Chinese parents' usage of "WeChat," the dominating social networking mobile application in China, in their educational involvement. We find that middle-class parents are the privileged ones who have exploited the use of "WeChat" not only as a…

Social class differences in educational decision-making form an important explanation for persisting educational inequalities, particularly in choice-driven systems with early tracking. Nevertheless, little is known about the process preceding these choices, especially when school and track choice are interrelated. Building on school choice…

This article explores the contrasting predispositions of a group of working-class and middle-class undergraduates to using nepotism to gain advantage in the labour market. Drawing upon a Bourdieusian framework, it is argued that the middle-class students, whose habitus was aligned to the field, were more likely to express a willingness to utilise…

In 1960s Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilian white middle class embraced the samba music written by working-class blacks as a source of authentic national culture. Cultural mediators, or individuals that bridged sociocultural spheres and negotiated the terms in which work was produced and circulated, were essential to samba's mainstream acceptance. This…

Much of the literature on social class and language study in schools argues that for middle-class parents and their children, languages are chosen for their capacity to offer forms of distinction that provide an edge in the global labour market. In this paper, we draw on data collected from interviews with parents and children in middle-class…

This paper reports findings from a study of 49 young first-year UK undergraduates who had undergone one or two weeks of work experience at school between the ages of 14 and 16. Previous studies focusing on the whole school cohort suggested that the nature of work experience placements was strongly predicted by class. In particular, middle class…

As their numbers at university grow, we need to gain a better understanding of the different ways in which working-class students negotiate their potential outsider status in what is often considered an essential middle-class institution. Based on data from a four-year longitudinal, qualitative study of working-class students at a Canadian…

Strategies employed by middle-class families to ensure successful educational outcomes for their children have long been the focus of theoretical and empirical analysis in the United Kingdom and beyond. In austerity England, the issue of middle-class social reproduction through higher education increases in saliency, and students' awareness of how…

We investigate class differences in youth activity participation with interview, survey, and archival data from a diverse sample of parents (n = 51) in two schools. Findings point toward structural rather than cultural explanations. Working- and middle-class parents overlap in parenting logics about participation, though differ in one respect:…

The white middle-class parents who chose to send their children to urban comprehensives largely rejected engaging in the usual competitiveness for educational success. Nevertheless the parents in our study still found themselves wittingly or otherwise captured by that same discourse. Their children are high achievers and are regarded as a valuable…

Positioning theory provides a lens through which to view the narrative accounts of working-class parents as dynamic, intentional acts of positioning intended to gain the recognition of school personnel as full partners in the education of their children. Knowing that school personnel will not treat them with the kind of respect given middle-class…