Sociology of Education

87(1) 1–15
Habitus Transformation and Ó American Sociological Association 2013
DOI: 10.1177/0038040713498777
Hidden Injuries: Successful http://soe.sagepub.com

Working-class University
Students

Wolfgang Lehmann1

Abstract
As the numbers of working-class students at university grow, we need to gain a better understanding of
the different ways in which they consolidate their working-class habitus with the middle-class culture of
the academic field. Drawing on data from a four-year longitudinal, qualitative study of working-class stu-
dents at a large, research-intensive Canadian university, I focus on the experiences of those participants
who fully embraced, became integrated, and achieved academic success at university. They not only spoke
about gaining new knowledge, but also about growing personally, changing their outlooks on life, growing
their repertoire of cultural capital, and developing new dispositions and tastes about a range of issues, from
food to politics and their future careers. Yet, the interviews also reflect a complex and complicated mix of
allegiances to and dismissal of their working-class roots, as many recognize this transformative process as
having made relationships with parents or former friends and peers more difficult. The article concludes
with a discussion of the implications for working-class students who increasingly distance themselves from
the class culture in which they grew up, but who are still likely to find themselves in adult situations in
which they are perceived as cultural outsiders.

Keywords
working-class students, higher education, habitus, transformation, social inequality

INTRODUCTION people over their four years of undergraduate stud-

Social class remains one of the most ‘‘reliable’’
and persistent predictors of educational and labor
market attainment. Any measure of parental social
class position, be that income, occupation, or most
importantly, level of education, can be shown to
be related to the educational pathways and
achievement of children and young people. Fur-
thermore, decades of educational expansion and
reform have done little to lessen this relationship
between class and educational attainment.
Yet, there are also growing numbers of
working-class young people who overcome these
barriers, enter higher education, and succeed in
it. In this article, I present data from a study in
which I have followed such a group of young
ies at a large, research-intensive, public university
in Canada. I will show how these young people
themselves reflect on their position as working-
class students and their academic success, but
also how their success might cause them to feel
‘‘caught in the middle’’ (Grimes and Morris
1997), like ‘‘strangers in paradise’’ (Ryan and
1
University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario,
Canada
Corresponding Author:
Wolfgang Lehmann, University of Western Ontario,
Department of Sociology, Social Science Centre 5430,
London, ON N6C 2K5, Canada.
Email: wlehmann@uwo.ca
2 Sociology of Education 87(1)
Sackrey 1984) or ‘‘straddlers’’ (Lubrano 2004),
and experience what Sennett and Cobb (1972)
have called ‘‘hidden injuries of class’’ as the stu-
dents need to negotiate a precarious balance
between their old and new social worlds.
Social Class and Higher Education
Although young people from working-class back-
grounds still encounter formidable access barriers
to higher education, be they financial, geographi-
cal, or cultural, the absolute number of working-
class students at university has increased, which
has led to a growing body of scholarship investi-
gating their experiences. Working-class students
have been shown to approach university with
apprehension and higher levels of uncertainty
(Lehmann 2007a), and they often encounter higher
education as a ‘‘foreign’’ environment in which
they feel like cultural outsiders (Lehmann 2007b,
2009a, 2009b). Researchers have investigated
young people’s perspectives on the value of higher
education (Archer, Hutchings, and Ross 2003;
Brooks 2003), their choice of institution (Reay,
David, and Ball 2005), and their various experien-
ces at university (Baxter and Britton 2001; Quinn
2004; Reay, Crozier, and Clayton 2010). For
instance, Berger and Milem (1999) argue that stu-
dents from higher socioeconomic status (SES)
backgrounds are less likely to drop out of univer-
sity, largely because they are more likely to
become successfully integrated at university,
both academically and socially. Walpole (2003)
further found that low-SES students studied less,
spent more time working off campus, and ulti-
mately had lower levels of involvement and
achievement. Moreover, Ostrove and Long
(2007) have documented a significant relationship
between social class and a sense of belonging at
university, which in turn can be linked to involve-
ment, integration, and achievement. The risks of
becoming cultural outsiders are especially pro-
nounced in elite universities (Aries and Seider
2005; Reay, Crozier, and Clayton 2009) and elite
university programs such as law or medicine.
Despite these disadvantages and struggles, work-
ing-class students have also been shown to achieve
remarkably successful academic and social inte-
gration (Lehmann 2012), although their success
at times requires unique adaptive strategies, such
as engaging in moral discourses about working-
class values and ethics, including hard work, inde-
pendence, and perseverance (Lehmann 2009a;
Stuber 2006). The work of Bourdieu (1977,
1990) has informed much of this research on
working-class students’ university experiences.
Bourdieu’s ideas can be summarized, albeit rather
simplistically, as follows: Our dispositions are
shaped in significant ways by our social milieu;
in turn, leaving a social environment in which
we are comfortable to enter a new field has the
potential to cause confusion, conflict, and
struggle.
Alternatively, Granfield (1991) has demon-
strated that working-class and low-income stu-
dents in elite U.S. law schools initially adapt to
the demands of their new elite environments by
mimicking their more privileged peers, but gradu-
ally became more like them in their tastes and dis-
positions. Although Granfield explains these strat-
egies as forms of stigma management, habitus and
field are still powerful principles for understand-
ing this gradual transformation. Lee and Kramer
(2013), for instance, explain how working-class
students in an elite U.S. college struggle to consol-
idate their newly developing college identity with
that of their working-class home communities.
Lee and Kramer’s research considers habitus as
open to transformation in certain fields and under
certain conditions. As working-class students
begin to develop a middle-class habitus, however,
they do not simply shed their working-class iden-
tity. Instead, the authors argue, students often need
to come to terms with deteriorating relationships
with family and peers at home, just as they
develop new forms of cultural and social capital
at university.
Hurst (2010) further suggests that we need to
consider differences in adaptive strategies
employed by working-class students. Studying
21 successful working-class students at a large,
public U.S. university, Hurst distinguishes
between (1) loyalists, (2) renegades, and (3) dou-
ble agents. These are students who (1) remain
strongly committed to their working-class roots,
(2) have distanced themselves from their
working-class backgrounds and have come to
embrace middle-class cultures and goals, and (3)
move between both worlds, respectively. In other
words, students in Hurst’s study used different
strategies to manage what Baxter and Britton
(2001:99) have called habitus dislocation, an
experience they define as ‘‘a painful dislocation
between an old and newly developing habitus,
which are ranked hierarchically and carry conno-
tations of inferiority and superiority.’’
Lehmann
Memoirs and biographical accounts of those
who have achieved social mobility through educa-
tion vividly reflect the aforementioned class strug-
gles at university (Dews and Law 1995; Grimes
and Morris 1997; Lubrano 2004; Muzzatti and
Samarco 2006; Ryan and Sackrey 1984; Welsch
2005). Many adults with working-class back-
grounds who have achieved social mobility remem-
ber their time at university as a period of profound
confusion that includes feelings of inferiority vis-à-
vis their well-traveled, better read, privately edu-
cated, well-spoken, articulate, and generally more
privileged peers (and faculty). They speak of aca-
demic struggles, false starts and restarts, chance
encounters with faculty, and an often circuitous tra-
jectory toward academic success. These stories
highlight the importance of cultural capital (Bour-
dieu 1986) for the ease with which those who pos-
sess it navigate university life and the symbolic vio-
lence felt by those whose cultural capital does not
live up to the expectations of academia. As they
struggle to fit in, and develop new forms of cultural
and social capital, they also begin to experience
more difficult relationships with their parents, sib-
lings, and old friends. Moreover, these narratives
illustrate that arriving at one’s middle-class destina-
tion does not resolve these struggles. Rather, aca-
demics, journalists, and other professionals from
working-class backgrounds talk about continued
feelings of being outsiders, having lost their true
selves, and feeling like frauds or imposters. These
mixed feelings of having both gained and lost in
their academic pursuits is reflected in the titles of
the collections and books containing memoirs and
experiences of members of the socially mobile
working-class, as they are Caught in the Middle
(Grimes and Morris 1997), like Strangers in Para-
dise (Ryan and Sackrey 1984) in a permanent state
of Limbo (Lubrano 2004).
Although much of this literature shares an
assumption that working-class status represents
a unique and distinct disadvantage, be that because
working-class students are financially disadvan-
taged (tuition increases and consumption pressures
at university), because they are culturally disad-
vantaged (lacking insights into rules and norms
at university), because their habitus clashes with
the higher education field, or because they lack
the social networks to fully capitalize on their edu-
cation, I want to focus in this article on students
who have overcome these disadvantages and
been exceptionally successful at university. I am
asking the following set of research question:
3
Research Question 1: How do successful
working-class university students describe
their university experiences?
Research Question 2: To what degree do they
relate their success to their social
background?
Research Question 3: Does their success at
university entail a shift toward a middle-
class habitus?
Research Question 4: Has success changed
their relationship to others, such as parents
and former friends and peers?
METHODOLOGY
The data for this article were collected in a four-
year longitudinal study of working-class students
at a large, research-intensive university in Ontario,
funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Participants
were interviewed three times—in the first, second,
and final years of their undergraduate studies. In
the first phase, 75 newly enrolled working-class
students were interviewed between early September
and mid-October 2005, soon after arriving on
campus and beginning their studies. They were
recruited through advertisements in the student
newspaper, posters around campus and on resi-
dence floors, and through announcements made in
first-year classes across all the disciplines offered
at the university. Although the sampling process
restricted the ability of random sampling, the study
relied on a carefully constructed judgment sample
meant to be as representative as possible. For
instance, the first-phase sample was composed of
70 percent women and 30 percent visible minorities
(mostly East Indian and Southeast-Asian), which,
based on available institutional data, reasonably
closely mirrors the composition of the university’s
incoming, working-class student body. The age
range of participants at the first interview was 17
to 21, with a median age of 18, and the majority
had entered university directly from high school.
All were the first in their extended families to
attend university. More specifically, approximately
65 percent of fathers and mothers had not attained
education beyond high school. Furthermore, most
fathers were employed in blue-collar occupations
(e.g., factory workers, truck drivers), the trades, or
lower-level service occupations. A small minority
of fathers had worked their way into supervisory
positions in factories or had become self-employed.
4 Sociology of Education 87(1)
Mothers were mostly employed in lower-level ser-
vice occupations or in factory work. A minority
were homemakers or self-employed. None of the
parents were employed in positions generally con-
sidered middle-class, such as the professions or
higher levels of management.
All interviews were audio-taped, transcribed,
and analyzed using qualitative analysis software.
Although the study was guided by a set of research
questions, I nonetheless followed analysis guide-
lines set out by Strauss and Corbin (1990), begin-
ning with initial coding of interview and focus
group data into relatively open categories to estab-
lishing more specific coding hierarchies and ulti-
mately developing more selective empirical and
theoretical categories (e.g., the patterns of trans-
formation described in the following).
Although the first interview phase involved 75
participants, I have restricted analysis for this arti-
cle to a subsample of 22 participants. Given my
focus on university as a habitus-transforming pro-
cess, this subsample represents those student who
not only remained in the study throughout its four-
year duration, but can also be described as excep-
tionally successful, both in terms of their academic
and social integration at university. Academic suc-
cess is defined as performing substantially above
average and social success is shown through con-
structive involvement in various university clubs
or organizations and generally embracing univer-
sity life and culture. I relied on students’ own nar-
ratives of academic and social success, rather than
official data such as grade point average.
Although the focus of this article is on the com-
monality of having become academically and
socially integrated, there are other ways in which
these students are alike and different from one
another. A more detailed discussion of the various
trajectories these students have experienced over
their four years of undergraduate studies is beyond
the scope of this contribution. Elsewhere, I have
discussed in more detail student typologies (Leh-
mann 2012) and trajectories (Lehmann 2013).
There was a clear tendency in the data that those
who eventually became successfully integrated
and committed students entered university with
ambitious but realistic career goals and after con-
siderable research about different universities and
programs (Lehmann 2012). Furthermore, long-
term integration was easier for those who were
able to adjust to university life early on. The stu-
dents on which I focus in these articles also had
in common that they embraced the habitus-
transformative aspects of university life. This dis-
tinguishes them from others in the study who were
more likely to actively resist or be passively con-
fused by the middle-class culture or demands of
university (Lehmann 2013).
As Table 1 shows, the majority of these 22 par-
ticipants had either decided to continue their edu-
cation in graduate or professional school programs
(e.g., law school, medical school, or teacher edu-
cation) or secured upwardly mobile employment
(e.g., as management trainees).
The interview quotes in the following analysis
reflect the actual transcripts as closely as possible,
with a few minor editorial changes to make them
more readable. I also use pseudonyms throughout
to protect the confidentiality and anonymity of the
research participants. Finally, I wish to stress that
it is not my intention to generalize from these data
to all working-class students at this or any other
university. Instead, my goal is to offer productive
insights and interpretations that will hopefully
stimulate further study and investigation.
FINDINGS
Success
As the focus of this article is on working-class stu-
dents whose transition to and experiences at uni-
versity are characterized by ease, success, and
high levels of achievement, I begin with a discus-
sion of how this success is reflected in the partic-
ipants’ interviews. Ed, for instance, is a student
whose time at university was characterized by out-
standing academic and social achievement. He
maintained an exceptionally high average and
was also actively involved in various extracurricu-
lar activities, most importantly the university
marching band. He came from a very working-
class family, his mother working as a farm laborer
and his father doing errant work at a casino in his
hometown. Here, Ed reflects on his success:
It’s been an amazing experience just being
away from home and doing something
that no-one else in my family had done
before—it was pretty good. Just because
every time I’d go home for a family
reunion, like, how I was doing seemed to
be a hot topic amongst everybody.
Furthermore, Ed was one of the students who
strongly felt that his working-class background
 Table 1. Participant profiles

Father’s Mother’s Father’s Mother’s University Future education

Name education education occupation occupation subject and career plan

Agnes High school High school Factory Home maker Kinesiology Teaching
Alison High school High school Postal worker N/A Geology Oil field geologist
Andrea High school High school Janitor Bank clerk Bio science Med school
Andrew Below high school Below high school Retired (cook) Janitor Bio science Med school
Anna High school Some community college Millwright Teaching assistant Kinesiology Teaching
Brandon High school High school Building supply sales Home decorator Classics Teaching
Brian High school High school Lake marina manager Works with husband Economics Grad school
Britney N/A High school N/A Office worker Information studies Grad school
Carol High school High school Postal worker Beautician Business Management training
Christina Below high school Below high school Factory Home maker Philosophy Grad school
Darren High school High school Security guard Office worker Bio science Med school
Ed Below high school Below high school Casino money runner Farm laborer Bio science Med school
Hilary Below high school Below high school Truck driver Supermarket worker Sociology Grad school
Ian Below high school Below high school Electrician Hair dresser Health sciences Dental school
Jill High school High school Diamond setter Factory Health sciences Grad school
John High school High school Construction Factory Chemistry Grad school
Kristen Below high school High school Factory Factory History University administration
Lesley High school High school Construction Cafeteria worker Kinesiology Teaching
Maggie High school High school Restaurant owner Restaurant owner Health science Teaching
Melissa High school High school Postal worker Beautician Business Management training
Monica High school High school Warehouse Hairdresser French Teaching
Tanja High school Below high school Factory Supermarket worker Bio-chem Med school

5
6 Sociology of Education 87(1)
was, if anything, an advantage rather than a barrier
to his success:
I guess [there is] a stereotype that there were
a lot of spoiled kids here that you would be
made fun of for being lower class, but I
haven’t experienced any of that at all. . . . I
find people are fairly accepting of you if
you come from, like, an interesting back-
ground, rather than what they’ve been
exposed to, because a lot of the people who
come from upper class, lived in an upper class
area and therefore grew up around people that
were in the same situation as them, it’s nice to
be around someone different. And I’ve defi-
nitely experienced that with my friends. . . .
Yeah, so . . . I guess . . . it’s a nice change
from everyone just knowing friends that
have, like, doctor parents, or . . . dentist
parents.
Throughout all three interviews, Ed described
his transition and his relationship with peers at
university, peers back home, and family as rela-
tively uncomplicated. Similarly, Andrea speaks
about university exceeding her expectations.
Like Ed, Andrea was a very high-achieving stu-
dent academically, but also one who was fully
immersed in the student experience:
I think I expected a lot from [university]
coming here, I came here knowing it was
a big school, and knowing that it had a lot
to offer, but I think that it did exceed my
expectations in the terms of what it’s had
to offer me with my, like, I’ve had jobs
while I’ve been here, and opportunities to
expand my academic learning while I was
here, and these things that I didn’t know
when I was first coming.
Students further spoke about a gradual shift
from a relatively utilitarian, career-focused to
a more learning-centered attitude toward univer-
sity. Although the vast majority of participants
spoke about careers in law and medicine in their
first interviews, Table 1 shows that for many of
the successful students, interest eventually shifted
toward academically focused graduate studies, as
Britney explains:
I was always under the impression in first
and second year that I would just get my
degree and go straight into work. And
then in third year I started thinking about
doing a Master’s and I started taking my
schoolwork more seriously and interacting
with professors and TAs more. . . . I feel
extremely ready for grad school. I actually
went, and this is ’cause I feel like my con-
fidence has been built and . . . but the other
day I went and talked to a professor in the
Master’s program that I applied to, I just
wanted to meet her ’cause I . . . I looked
at her research interests, and I thought it
was fascinating, so I just wanted to go and
meet her and talk to her, and she made
a comment, she’s like ‘‘Wow, you’re defi-
nitely a grad student in the making.’’
Finally, academic and social integration was
also related to active involvement or employment
on campus. Monica enjoyed her first-year resi-
dence experience so much that she stayed on as
residence advisor, a role that she credits with her
personal growth:
I didn’t expect the extent of appreciation
and just opportunities that residence staff
had opened up for me, so that was great.
I’ve learned about other cultures and diver-
sity, and religions. My eyes have been
opened to so much, and it makes me wonder
how much more is out there. Culturally I
think I’ve grown.
Kristen, who lived with her parents off campus
and struggled in first year with becoming attached
to the campus community eventually experienced
integration after taking up employment as a cam-
pus tour guide and subsequently with the univer-
sity’s recruitment team:
First year wasn’t very fun, just focusing on
academics and living at home. I think that
applying for that job [campus tour guide]
in second year was a turning point for me.
It was the first time that I really made an
effort to put myself out there, I guess to
get involved. I don’t think I would have
done as well academically, I think I would
have burned out. I wouldn’t have met nearly
as many people, I wouldn’t be leaving with
such strong friendships and I don’t think I
would be as happy if I hadn’t gotten
involved.
Lehmann
The experiences of Monica and Kristen high-
light the importance of immersion in the social
life of a university as a precondition for their trans-
formation of habitus.
Whether describing their academic and social
integration as undergraduate students or their
emerging interest in graduate studies, these quota-
tions illustrate not only a sense of accomplish-
ment, but also relative ease regarding their transi-
tion to university and their future educational and
occupational destinations. These narratives are in
stark contrast to stories of habitus dislocation or
fish-out-of-water experiences that are usually
associated with a Bourdieusian notion of habitus
as relatively static and a source of conflict when
one encounters an unfamiliar field. Bourdieu
(1990; see also Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992)
himself has acknowledged that habitus is open to
transformation. In the next section, I will therefore
show how the narratives of successful working-
class university students are indicative of habitus
transformation.
Transformation
Given the substantial literature on university inte-
gration and academic success (Pascarella and Ter-
enzin 1991; Tinto 1987), as well as the relation-
ship between habitus and field in higher
education (Reay 2001; Lehmann 2012), it is
instructive to investigate whether success at uni-
versity for the participants was accompanied by
a transformation of their habitus, from one that
was essentially working class when they entered
university to one that had become more middle
class at the end of their final year at university.
For some, like Anna, this transformation
required a conscious effort to adjust their physical
presence:
Yeah. I think at first I felt that I didn’t really
fit in, but then I tried to make . . . I tried to
make an effort to . . . to maybe sorta look
the part to sorta fit in more with the [univer-
sity] crowd. . . . Just like the clothes I would
wear, the places I would go. Probably just
the way I dressed and that kind of stuff.
This is reminiscent of the research Granfield
(1991) carried out with working-class students at
an elite law school and further reflects a presenta-
tion of self to camouflage the potential stigma of
7
being seen as working-class in an essentially
middle-class institution. Yet, Anna is quick to
add that: ‘‘it doesn’t really change who I am, the
clothes that I’m wearing, I still have the same val-
ues and same ideas.’’ This qualifying statement
already hints at some level of conflict associated
with the type of conscious transformation
described by Anna; a type of conflict that reflects
a habitus in transition.
Others, like Brandon, talk about relative differ-
ences to their former selves and friends who did
not attend university, all the while recognizing
his own transformation from a scared freshman
to a successful student about to graduate:
I was terrified [coming to university]. It was
something foreign, I didn’t really know
what to expect. . . . Well, it’s been life alter-
ing really. I’ve thought about this for
a while, and when I talk to friends of
mine that just went right into jobs after
high school, or went to, like, maybe a short
college program or something like that, as
opposed to people I’ve met in university,
it’s kind of difficult to describe, but there’s
a difference. I think [I’m] more open
minded maybe, more receptive to different
ideas, and more willing to recognize differ-
ences in opinion.
While Anna and Brandon focus more on phys-
ical and academic changes, Brian more directly
addresses how his accumulation of cultural capi-
tal, such as becoming interested in food or urban
hipsterdom, colors his image of himself in the
near future:
Where do I picture myself in four years or
something? It’s going to be living in either
Toronto or Ottawa, you know, in the middle
of the city, not in the suburbs or anything.
Going to work in, you know in a shirt and
tie kinda thing and doing research and,
you know, writing papers all day. I think
[my girlfriend and I] would have some ass-
hole urbanite traits, like we will probably
end up being like crazy foodies—well,
we’re getting there already, like, we’ll be
those people going to eight different farm-
ers markets and stuff like that. So I mean
it is quite a departure from what they’re
[parents] doing.
8 Sociology of Education 87(1)
A similar shift in cultural capital was discussed
by Britney:
[The local] museum had this gallery opening
on Friday, a new one, and it was between 9
to 2 in the morning. And [my boyfriend and
I] went there and they had free food and
wine and a band playing, and we went to
go see the band. Yeah, now we’re more
interested in things like that.
Similarly, Jill describes changes in her lifestyle
that she associates with having been exposed to
a diversity of cultural experiences at university,
but also through a new set of friends, including
her middle-class boyfriend:
I’m starting to drink wine and things like
that a lot more. And, I [learned more about]
the tastes of wine and all that kind of stuff. I
don’t know, but things like that is what I
mean by change. More luxury, I guess, of
things like that. I go to plays now with [boy-
friend]. And I think because of being
exposed to all this kind of stuff at univer-
sity, that kinda shapes who I am now.
In addition to developing middle-class forms of
cultural capital, participants also talked about hav-
ing adjusted their political views or having devel-
oped a different understanding of the world in
which they live. Importantly, this was usually
related to a departure from their former lives.
Many of the students in the study came from either
small towns or fairly homogeneous working-class
neighborhoods in larger cities. Consequently, they
described their transformation in terms of experi-
encing diversity and gaining a better understand-
ing of, for instance, politics and appreciation for
different cultures, sexualities, and lifestyles more
generally, as the following quotation illustrates:
We come from somewhere where every-
one’s very the same, there’s not a lot of
diversity in my town. . . . But you’re so
free [emphasis added] at [university], you
know, the freedom is amazing. . . . I’ve
learned about other cultures and diversity,
and religions. My eyes have been opened
to so much, and it makes me wonder how
much more is out there. Culturally I think
I’ve grown. . . . If I were living at home, I
don’t think it would be good.
Aside from the growth associated with expo-
sure to diversity, Monica’s assertion of the free-
dom she enjoys at university has to be interpreted
as more than being free from the constraints of
parental supervision, but also a sense of departure
from a working-class habitus that she has increas-
ingly come to think of as limiting and restricted.
Similarly, as Melissa’s following quotation shows,
students’ experiences at university are not only
seen as liberating, but also as providing them
with a sense of power that they have formerly
not enjoyed and that, they feel, eludes their parents
and peers left behind. Although this newfound
sense of being empowered is an important aspect
of the agentic dimension of their transformation,
it also becomes part of the growing distance
between their old and new habitus, as Melissa’s
comments about the relationship between power
and change suggest:
Yeah. I think it’s knowledge, like, knowl-
edge comes with power [emphasis added].
[Laughs] So, in university, things we
learned really helped us open our minds,
in terms of politics and stuff; previously I
would never even care about it, I don’t
read about it, but now I do, I read about
business, I read about culture stuff. Like,
there’s a lot of different things out there.
But it also shows that I have a lot of power
to change [emphasis added].
Similar to Monica’s concerns about the lack of
diversity in her pre-university life and what she
now perceives as small-mindedness, others have
talked about how their lives and those of their
high school peers have taken dramatically differ-
ent paths. Although most participants avoided nor-
mative claims about the value of these different
pathways, as is the case with Tanja in the follow-
ing quote, their narratives are nonetheless reflec-
tive of a sense of relief that their own trajectories
have taken a different turn:
Night and day. My friends at home and my
friends here. I still stay in contact with my
friends at home. We grew apart, but we
still, you know, miss each other and we’ll
message each other on Facebook and that
kind of stuff, but I have to say, not in a neg-
ative way, but I am totally different. So my
high school friends, one thing that’s really
absurd, they are all either getting married
Lehmann
or having kids and I think that’s sort of
a small town thing. So you know, going
home, they are all in really different stages
of their life. For example, my one friend
just bought a house with her boyfriend. So
with them, it’s a lot more, talking about
kids and I can’t relate to it, but you know,
them telling me about so and so is pregnant
and, you know, come meet this person’s
baby with me and . . . I think that it’s totally
different. Whereas [at university], my
friends have similar goals as me, so it’s
more, you know, a discussion on which
med schools have called you for interviews,
you know, ‘‘oh I went to visit this university
for an interview, they offered me a posi-
tion.’’ You know, that kind of talk.
The congruence of her new university friends’
goals with her own suggest that Tanja, much as
many other participants in this study, see them-
selves as having embarked upon and perhaps
completed a transformation of habitus that has
seen them move increasingly further away from
their old self, their family, and their old peer
group and arrive at a destination that is better,
desirable, and has given them a sense of mid-
dle-class agency from which they can continue
to grow. Furthermore, as part of this transforma-
tion of habitus, the ‘‘old’’ has become foreign and
dislocating, while the ‘‘new’’ is now familiar and
reassuring. Yet, this journey is not without
struggle.
Hidden Injuries: Transformation
and Conflict
For many of the participants in the study, the suc-
cessful transformations described previously did
come at some cost, as they described changing
and usually conflicting relationships with parents
and former friends. In some instances, dissolving
old friendships was described as a natural process
of growing older and drifting apart, as the quota-
tion from Jill suggests:
I think you have to have similarities, or,
like, a common ground or a common area
to keep that, that relationship [with old
high school friends]. Like, I come from
a much more academic background now,
whereas they don’t. And it’s difficult to
find those similarities and values; but the
9
true ones, I think, stick around. And those
are the ones that you could still just pick
up a conversation, even though you haven’t
seen them for a year.
Rather than seeing changing friendships as
a natural outcome of growing older, having differ-
ent experiences, and drifting apart, others describe
their relationships with former friends and with
their family in terms that are more directly
addressing conflict. Monica here describes her
changing relationships with her parents since
attending university:
They [parents] can’t relate to university the
way that sometimes I wish they could. You
know, sometimes when I’m really upset
it’s, you know, I don’t want to have to
explain it all, you know, all the step by
step how this works, and how that works
in order for them to understand fully my
frustration with something, whatever it is.
. . . And sometimes I’ve found myself after-
wards, after getting into an argument with
my parents thinking my patience is less
for them because . . . it’s not that I think
that I’m better than them, but . . . I have
seen things that they haven’t, and I’ve
learned so many things about different cul-
tures and religions that they don’t know
about—and that’s not their fault, like, I
had no idea until I got here, so, you know,
little comments will send me off the handle
now.
Unlike the narratives of success, progress,
and growth illustrated in the previous section,
Monica’s quotation hints at a more troubled
form of transformation, in which relationships
are being disrupted and power is being renegoti-
ated. Although Monica insists that she has not
become better than her parents, she has nonethe-
less become less accepting of their lives and
their views. This disruption cuts both ways, as
her comments suggest a relationship in which
neither no longer understands or relates to the
other.
Anna, who earlier described changing her
physical appearance to better fit with the domi-
nant, middle-class looks of her university peers,
here talks about how relationships with old friends
at home have become more difficult, but also how
she is troubled by these difficulties:
10
This is probably going to sound bad, but I
think by being at school it’s . . . you
know, I can go back home and I’m proud
of my accomplishments, but at the same
time I kinda look down on people that . . .
not . . . I don’t want to say that I judge
my friends that didn’t go to school, but
. . . at the same time I know I’ve got an
edge over them. . . . You know, sometimes
it’s hard when trying to talk to them about
certain issues or, you know, world issues
and that kinda stuff, because they just . . .
whether or not they care about them, or
want to learn about those kind of things, I
find when, like, educational topics come
up, I lose them. You can tell when they
don’t understand what I’m talking about,
or they . . . or they think I’m showing off
by what I know, and that kinda stuff. And
I feel bad, and I try not to put them in those
situations, but . . . I mean, sometimes I’m
right, like, you know? . . . Other than going
to see my family, I don’t really enjoy going
[home] anymore and seeing friends.
Anna’s last comment can be interpreted both
literally and metaphorically, as the home she no
longer enjoys going back to may well reflect
a working-class habitus she has transcended and
which is becoming a burden. Bourdieu has often
used the metaphor of a game to explain the
habitus-field relationship (see e.g., Bourdieu and
Wacquant 1992). In simplistic terms, congruence
between habitus and field exists if an individual
accepts the purpose of the game and understands
its rule. Following this analogy, we can explain
why working-class students might struggle at uni-
versity, which has been characterized as an essen-
tially middle-class institution that is governed by
rules that are unfamiliar to working-class students,
whether these rules relate to technical aspects,
such as course selection and registration, or cul-
tural aspects, such as dress or speech. What the sit-
uations of students like Monica and Anna show is
that a student who has successfully begun transfor-
mation of her habitus after entering a new field,
and who has mastered the rules of this new
game, encounters problems in familiar fields that
are governed by rules she no longer wishes to
follow.
This conflict is perhaps even more profoundly
explained by Hilary, who spoke at length about the
social milieu in which she grew up. Although the
Sociology of Education 87(1)
quotation excerpted next suggests a rather clean
break with her background, her interview was far
more reflective of a struggle to come to terms
with leaving her old world behind and feeling
guilty for doing so. These feelings were mostly
expressed in nonverbal clues, such as apologetic
laughter, although Hilary was otherwise very con-
fident and articulate:
I feel like I can’t relate to my parents a lot. I
mean, I love ’em to death, but . . . well,
they’re both very close minded, not having
an education or everything like that, and
just working your whole life, I think that
just happens, right? So, I feel like I can’t
have an intellectual conversation with my
Mom, it’s really just surface conversations.
She’ll like to hear me talk about things I
learn, and I like to share it with her, but I
can’t get too deep into it because then it’s
just like [whoosh] right over her head. And
no one likes talking to someone who you
can tell doesn’t really connect with you.
. . . I don’t know if it’s [where I grew up].
I mean, overall, they’re all factory workers,
right? And it’s . . . so it is a lower class
sort of mentality down there and . . . so
this is a little out . . . not out there, sorry,
this is just a little blunt, but . . . like, they’re
all racist [Laughs] you know? Everybody’s
Mom barely works and cleans house and
does nothing with that, you know? And
that’s just how it is with all my friends too,
so it . . . it’s really hard coming from univer-
sity and, you know, being open minded and
writing about things . . . racism and sexism
and feminist studies and then going back to
a home where it’s like ‘‘Oh . . . [Laughs]
you just get so angry.’’ [Laughs] . . . I
don’t like going home and . . . same old,
same old, no-one’s doing anything new and
. . . so I’m happy to get away from that.
Even more than Monica and Anna, Hilary
describes having left her old habitus behind with
a sense of relief and as a form of escape. As
with the other participants discussed previously,
her transformation at university has rendered the
‘‘old’’ stifling, backward, and no longer
acceptable.
Ian described the potential conflict between his
old and new friends in rather vivid terms. Whereas
Hilary, at least in her interview comments, rejects
Lehmann
her old habitus, Ian experiences a transitional hab-
itus in which the old and new still appear to be
competing, although it is clear which one is
‘‘winning’’:
I go home rarely now because my friends,
they haven’t changed at all, and I can’t
really explain that any more than that, but
I can’t communicate to them and relate
with them as well. . . . I guess, my friends
here, like . . . they’re very motivated,
they’re very ambitious, and they have big
dreams, if you will, like, career oriented, I
guess, and, like, that is something that is
very important to me, so I think that my
friends here I can relate more. . . . I get
the feeling that they [high school friends;
emphasis added] think that we [emphasis
added], if you will, the university students
are better than them. ’Cause they’re con-
stantly justifying their actions to me and I
don’t like that. But they’re constantly justi-
fying why they went to work, and they’re
always throwing money in my face, ’cause
I have none, and they have a lot, right? I
really don’t like that, I wish there wasn’t
that tension, but I don’t know how to get
that away. And it’s the main reason why I
don’t go home.
I emphasized Ian’s use of they and we when he
speaks about his former high school and current
university friends, respectively, as this small shift
in pronouns reflects a rather significant transfor-
mation in class associations.
All the narratives presented in this section have
at their core a theme of change and stagnation, but
also a sense that the young people at the center of
these narratives have not yet fully negotiated this
transition. Although all agreed that they have sig-
nificantly transformed their habitus, they find
themselves in a state of uncertainty that comes at
the cost of dividing and rethinking their loyalties
between the ‘‘old’’ and the ‘‘new.’’ The relief
many feel about having escaped what they con-
sider the narrow-minded and backward culture of
the social environments in which they grew up is
usually tempered by a sense of loss or at least sad-
ness about this escape. Yet, when asked directly
whether they are in a sense betraying their work-
ing-class origins by moving away and developing
a middle-class habitus, Kristen’s answer is entirely
reflective of how others felt:
11
[My parents] always wanted me to have
something better, so I think if I stayed there
I’d be letting them down. No, I don’t feel
guilty at all.
DISCUSSION
The young men and women in this study are on
a remarkable path toward upward social mobility.
Although I have not documented this fact in the
findings, every single young man and woman I
interviewed for this study attended university, to
varying degrees, with the hope to join the ranks
of professional middle-class knowledge workers.
Furthermore, all considered their decision to
attend university not only as the fulfillment of
their own educational hopes, but those of their
parents as well. Rather than acting as a barrier,
their working-class background can be interpreted
as the reason they attended university and were
successful once there. Students who fully
embraced and became integrated on campus also
experienced university as transformative. They
not only spoke about gaining new knowledge,
but also about growing personally, changing their
outlooks on life, growing their repertoire of cul-
tural capital, and developing new dispositions
and tastes about a range of issues, from food to
politics and their future careers. Being exposed
to new ideas in the courses they took and encoun-
tering class, ethnic, and sexual diversity in the
friends they made are important aspects of this
transformation; aspects they feel are denied those
they have ‘‘left behind,’’ such as their parents
and former friends. It is also worth remembering
that the subsample on which I focused in this arti-
cle were students who not only had been academ-
ically successful, but also fully immersed in all
social aspects of university life. I therefore did
not discuss the types of differences in working-
class students’ adaptation strategies evident in
Hurst’s (2010) loyalists, renegades, and double
agents, although such differences were evident in
the data (see e.g., Lehmann 2012, 2013).
Without a doubt, outgrowing one’s parents and
teenage peer group is a positive development
toward independent adulthood. Nonetheless, the
narratives of these young people, despite their
occasional swagger, also reflect a more serious
‘‘break up’’ with their habitus. For a middle-class
student, gaining independence from parents and
physically moving away from home does not
12
require the kind of fundamental breaking away
from their home communities and lifestyles that
the working-class young men and women in this
study described in the interviews.
The interviews reflect a complex and compli-
cated mix of allegiances to and dismissal of their
working-class roots. While maintaining contact
with former high school peers and family, the par-
ticipants also increasingly perceive of them as
narrow-minded and unambitious. Individualistic
notions of personal motivation, grit, and plucki-
ness are evoked to explain what sets them apart
from those they consider less driven or talented
and who ‘‘waste’’ their lives back in the old
working-class environment. Whereas they them-
selves have moved on and improved themselves,
old peers (and perhaps family) are seen as ‘‘stuck.’’
There is no malicious intent in these narratives.
They tend to be descriptive and at times illustra-
tive, rather than normative or moralizing. Yet,
there is an undercurrent of describing an emerging
or expanding status gap. For instance, the success
of those ‘‘left behind’’ (having early work experi-
ence in blue-collar careers; having children, own-
ing homes, etc.) are seen as deficient or of lesser
value than the success associated with becoming
educated, certified, and more cultured, although
in purely utilitarian terms, those left behind might
have higher incomes, more consumer goods, and
lower levels of debt. Thus, when the participants
talk about the narrow-mindedness of parents or
former friends, they do evoke their new knowl-
edge as one that carries more importance, is
more valuable, and sets them apart from their
less educated family members and peers. Sennett
and Cobb (1972) have referred to this as a form
of power that has the potential, whether intended
or not, to make others feel inadequate. Speaking
of one of their Bostonian working-class subjects
who sent his children to university, the authors
conclude that he is ‘‘seeing his boys move up, ful-
filling their part of the contract he has imposed on
them, by staying in school. But this means they
will now have power over him, will be able to
‘pull rank’ on him. . . . Indeed, if the father’s sac-
rifices do succeed in transforming his children’s
lives, he then becomes a burden to them, an
embarrassment’’ (Sennett and Cobb 1972:133).
These hidden injuries of class, which were of
most concern to Sennett and Cobb (1972), of
course focus on parents and their sacrifice. It could
be equally argued, however, that the students
themselves experience a hidden injury of class;
Sociology of Education 87(1)
one that they cannot perhaps yet comprehend. As
students move away from their working-class
backgrounds, they do lose networks and forms of
social capital. Although their working-class social
capital may not be of immediate value to them in
their goals to break into middle-class careers, they
nonetheless have value in having given them what
Giddens (1991) has called ontological security. It
cannot yet be clear to the participants what value
new friendships and networks they formed at uni-
versity will have. The aforementioned student life
everybody is living may still function as a form of
protection from the status hierarchies that have
persisted in the labor market. In the United States,
Canada, and the United Kingdom, there is no
shortage of evidence to suggest that despite educa-
tional expansion, class-based hierarchies have per-
sisted especially in the types of high-status profes-
sional occupations to which many of the
participants in this study aspire (Brown, Lauder,
and Ashton 2011; Collins 1979; Lehmann 2011;
Panel on Fair Access to the Professions 2009;
Wanner 2004). As the working-class students in
this study, at least narratively if not also in real
life, have begun to distance themselves from the
class culture in which they grew up, they are still
likely to find themselves in adult situations in
which they are perceived as cultural outsiders.
Success in traditional middle-class, professional
careers, such as law or medicine, still depends
on possession of specific forms of cultural, social,
and personal capital that goes beyond credentials
and may therefore elude the young men and
women in this study. They are thus at risk of being
caught between the ‘‘old’’ and the ‘‘new,’’ no lon-
ger feeling they belong to one, but not (yet)
accepted in the other. This unease and uncertainty
of their newly developing habitus may perhaps
already find expression in the fact that most
entered university with plans to become lawyers
and doctors, but many eventually revised these
plans in favor of academically focused graduate
work in related fields. Staying in education allows
these students to continue to transform while still
being protected by the somewhat cultural morato-
rium of university.
Yet, even those who have been successful in
achieving high levels of mobility continue to
experience the feelings of unease and being caught
between two worlds described in this article.
Working with essays contributed by academics
from working-class backgrounds, Ryan and Sack-
rey (1984) have documented how many of these
Lehmann
academics struggle with the feeling of being an
outsider in the academy and continuously have
to find ways to negotiate and consolidate their ori-
gins with their destinations. Grimes and Morris
(1997), using both survey and interview data, con-
firmed that working-class academics continue to
struggle not only in their feelings of being differ-
ent, but often also in real, tangible ways, such as
delayed entry into their careers and employment
in lower-status universities and colleges. Lubra-
no’s (2004) account of his own mobility into the
middle class, coupled with many interviews of
other straddlers, as he calls those who have left
their blue-collar, working-class roots for middle-
class careers, offer fascinating insights not only
into the struggles of moving between both worlds,
but also the advantages of living middle-class lives
that are informed by working-class values, norms,
and skills. I also have argued elsewhere that many
working-class students explain their success as the
result of unique working-class virtues they pos-
sess, such as a strong work ethic and independence
(Lehmann 2009a).
From a policy perspective, these findings create
an interesting conundrum. It is relatively easy to
suggest that university ought to offer working-class
students support in their transition to university, for
instance through mentoring programs or counseling
and support services. The experiences of working-
class academics suggest that these faculty members
could actually serve as an important resource for
current working-class students, both through their
pedagogy, but also as active role models or men-
tors. Yet, as Brook and Michell (2012:594) have
pointed out, both working-class students and aca-
demics may be ‘‘passing’’ so successfully that
they cannot recognize each other.
Moreover, the successful integration of working-
class students at university also creates a situation in
which they become increasingly alienated from their
families and former peer groups, with no guarantee
that their academic success will translate into occu-
pational achievement. The latter can be addressed
by universities as they increase service learning,
internship, and cooperative learning opportunities
that allow working-class students to develop net-
works and career-relevant employment experiences
while still at university. The former problem is
more difficult, as it would require a reconsideration
of what many consider to be the middle-class nature
of higher education. This is a high order, but one
that should begin with interrogating our own pre-
sumptions as educational sociologists. Despite a
13
tendency to romanticize working-class status, we
also tend to perceive of mobility through education
as essential and consider social reproduction for
the working class as problematic. Although this
does show a concern with working-class lives and
ambitions, it also denies value in working-
class experiences per se. That the young people in
this study view their own working-class background
as narrow-minded, limiting, racist, sexist, and
homophobic is testament to the fact that we fail at
university when it comes to situating working-class
lives in the context of other forms of oppression.
In the middle-class hegemony that defines univer-
sity, we as academics do, of course, contribute to
such views of success and failure, by elevating
certain forms of cultural capital over others. Thus,
rather than finishing university with a more critical
understanding of the structural and cultural
conditions of their former lives or those of their
parents and old friends, the students have joined
a middle-class chorus that renders working-class
knowledge and experience deficient if not
pathological.
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15
Author Biography
Wolfgang Lehmann received his PhD from the Univer-
sity of Alberta and is Associate Professor in the Depart-
ment of Sociology at the University of Western Ontario
(Canada). He recently completed a study of the experien-
ces of working-class, first-generation university students,
supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada (SSHRC) grant. He also publishes on
young people’s school-work transitions and vocational
education. His recent book is Choosing to Labour?
School-work transitions and social class (2007,
McGill-Queen’s University Press). Some of his recent
work has been published in the British Journal of Sociol-
ogy of Education.