Att kliva ur föräldrars fotspår : Ungas berättelser längs vägen mot högre studier

Abstract in English

This doctoral thesis investigates how young people whose parents lack higher education achieve academically and navigate pathways towards higher education. The guiding research questions address four issues: what motivates the participants to achieve academically and pursue higher education, how their aspirations are shaped over time, what appears to enable and to hinder these aspirations, and how their social background impacts their educational pathways.
The study is based on longitudinal life story interviews with thirteen young people, conducted annually from upper secondary school through the transition to higher education or other post-secondary pathways. The participants’ stories are presented individually, organised around four metaphorical pathways to higher education. Viewed through a life course perspective, the pathways to higher education emerge as processes shaped over time by social structures, relationships, educational transitions and individual actions. Drawing on Floya Anthias’ theoretical concept of translocational positionality, the intersectional analysis shows how these life course processes are socially positioned. It highlights the impact of social and educational segregation, while also showing how class background and migration background may become sources of motivation for pursuing higher education.
The study also shows how parents – despite representing the constraining factor that the participants have in common – constitute important social resources. Furthermore, the importance of relationships with teachers, peers and siblings runs throughout the participants’ stories. Safe social relationships, together with high expectations and academic recognition, appear crucial to developing a strong sense of agency. School environments may compensate for a lack of academic resources at home through teachers’ professional competence and supportive approaches. However, this compensatory potential depends on a safe social environment that creates favourable conditions for learning. Through its longitudinal life course approach with an intersectional analytical lens, this thesis contributes to qualitative social mobility research by highlighting pathways to higher education as processes shaped over time through social structures, significant relationships and young people’s own agency, rather than through individual choice alone.