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Meritocracy is used by governments in many societies as an 'effective' way to represent social justice and legitimise - explain away - class inequality. By focusing on a small number of working-class students who achieve academic 'success' and have reached elite universities in an ideal meritocratic environment - Chinese schooling - this paper aims to discuss the relation of meritocracy to upward social mobility and class domination. Our analysis raises questions about the notion of 'success' in a meritocratic environment and suggests the operation of a new form of symbolic domination in relation to these working-class high-achievers. Through their 'successes' at school, they are distanced from their working-class localities and histories, while they also remain outside of the middle-class sensibilities that they aspire to - they become a 'third class' whose core values reside in meritocracy itself. There is no transcendence of class here rather a different form of distinction and exclusion.

This article draws on case studies of nine working-class students at Southern, an elite university. It attempts to understand the complexities of identities in flux through Bourdieu's notions of habitus and field. Bourdieu (1990a) argues that when an individual encounters an unfamiliar field, habitus is transformed. He also writes of how the movement of habitus across new, unfamiliar fields results in 'a habitus divided against itself' (Bourdieu, 1999a). Our data suggest more nuanced understandings in which the challenge of the unfamiliar results in a range of creative adaptations and multi-faceted responses. They display dispositions of selfscrutiny and self-improvement – almost'a constant fashioning and re-fashioning of the self' but one that still retains key valued aspects of a working-class self. Inevitably, however, there are tensions and ambivalences, and the article explores these, as well as the very evident gains for working-class students of academic success in an elite HE institution.

studies in relation to working-class students at elite universities document on the one hand the role of 'mundane reflexivity' in dealing with class domination while on the other indicate a new form of domination and disadvantages working on these working-class 'exceptions' - they may achieve academically at university but experience various exclusions and self-exclusions in areas of social life. By drawing on a very small sample of 'counter-evidence' and 'exceptions within exceptions' - working-class students who achieve great social accomplishments at elite universities - this paper further explores the role of 'mundane reflexivity' in negotiating class domination and the possibilities of transcendence. We demonstrate the creative and transformative ways in which class domination is dealt with and document the prevalence of high-level reflexivity. Furthermore, we distinguish different forms and degrees of reflexivity, which then indicate the 'contingency' of reflexivity - the relation of the possibilities of reflexivity to the unequal distribution of social, cultural and economic capitals. We further argue that what appears to be a form of self-emancipation achieved by the 'transcending group' in our study also involves the discrete and insidious reproduction of social inequality.

This article is based on a comparative study of working-class students' experiences in English and Irish higher education. It highlights the lack of comparative studies on this topic based on qualitative research and why filling this gap is important in understanding access and widening participation. Drawing on biographical interviews with 139 people in a range of elite and non-elite institutions, the article discusses similarities as well as some differences between the data from the two countries in terms of class, identity and how working-class students view and value higher education. It maps out how the research relates to recent debates over social class and outlines the theoretical implications of these findings.

What type of parenting style can help children succeed? Academic discussions on this issue are divided into two different theoretical perspectives: cultural reproduction and cultural mobility. This study uses data from the 2017 Survey on the Social Mentality of Chinese College Students to empirically analyze the impact of parenting styles on children’s access to quality higher education. The results indicate that parenting styles not only act as an intermediary mechanism of family socioeconomic status in influencing children’s access to quality higher education but also have an independent effect. Among the various parenting styles, permissive parenting style is more conducive to children gaining admission to elite universities.

Pervasive socio-economic differences in relation to participation in higher education in the United Kingdom are particularly prominent in the most prestigious institutions. This study provides insight into why some individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds are successful in being admitted into one of these institutions. Underpinned by phenomenology, semi-structured interviews were carried out to examine the lived experiences of high-achieving students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds throughout their educational trajectories from primary school to a Russell Group university. Two main themes emerged from the data: identity and educational engagement. Various sources of disadvantage associated with material hardship, socio-cultural and interpersonal factors were strongly linked to identity and students' perceptions of their own social status. In turn, these factors and identity-related constructs associated with peer-group memberships, low expectations and negative group stereotypes affected how individuals engaged with education, contributing, for instance, to their lack of active involvement at school/college and poor attendance. However, identity-related factors were also found to influence individuals' educational engagement positively, including their motivations for overcoming obstacles, achieving high grades and pursuing HE. The barriers and facilitators discussed by these individuals have important implications for widening access to HE and thus require further consideration.

How do winners of processes of meritocracy make sense of those processes, especially in the face of forceful public critiques of their unequal outcomes? In this paper I analyze the meaning-making with respect to merit in university admissions of White, native-born undergraduates attending elite American and British universities. I find that United States students support the “calibration” of evaluations of merit, and emphasize evaluations of applicants’ contributions to the “collective merit” of their university cohorts. British students espouse a universalist, individualist understanding of merit. While conceptions of merit differed across national contexts, students in both reproduced the notions of merit espoused by their universities. I conclude that in spite of a long history of student protest on college campuses, rather than engagement with symbolic politics on liberal-identified campuses, self-interest in status legitimation dominates student perspectives, ultimately reproducing understandings of merit that will reproduce inequality. The paper draws upon 98 one-on-one in-depth interviews with White, native-born undergraduates attending Harvard University, Brown University, and University of Oxford.

The authors explored the influence of social class on identity formation in an interview study of 15 lower income students and 15 affluent students from a highly selective liberal arts school and 15 lower income students from a state college. Students ranked occupational goals as 1st in importance to identity and social class as 2nd. The affluent students regarded social class as significantly more important to identity than did the lower income students, were more aware of structural factors contributing to their success, and had higher occupational aspirations. Social class was an area of exploration for half the students, with higher levels of exploration shown by the lower income private school students than by the state college students. Lower income students developed an ideology that rationalized their social class position.

Geddes Poole offers a study of the late nineteenth-century educational institution, the Morley College for Working Men and Women established by the social reformer Emma Cons. She locates the origins of Morley College in two related social impulses within late Victorian society, the general movement for working-class education and the specific reform efforts of those \"social missionaries\" who sought to improve and enhance the lives and aspirations of the poor. She argues that the purpose of Morley College wasn't simply embourgoisement; it was just as much concerned with empowering its predominantly working-class students by providing them with access to knowledge and cultural capital that had largely been restricted to England's social elite.

[...]a significant section of the academia remained silent if not cooperative or passive supporters of the FYUP. [...]while agitations pursued at the university level, the nation continued to be distanced from and untouched by the entire debate. The moment should hence be used to highlight this bias and connection, as it is high time the current set of 'reforms' became an occasion to expose the elitist orientation of education policies that seek to strengthen the hold of the privileged classes on elite (central government-funded) universities; to relegate the lower middle class to second-grade regional universities and private institutes; and to keep the working class out of the university system altogether, except when the objective is to train them to be skilled workers for the global market.