In recent years, educational research has illustrated how persistent social structures are: Social background has a decisive influence on study experiences, life trajectories and regulates transitions within the European education institutions. Especially studies on higher education have shown that the influence of students' social class is not neutralized by entering university, but stays persistent throughout their educational careers (Finnegan, Merrill & Thunborg 2014; Reay, David & Ball 2005). Various empirical studies have offered insight into student biographies across Europe and thus highlighted how class inequality continues to put first-generation students and their learning processes at disadvantage (Finnegan, Fleming & Thunborg 2014). Access, retention, and student success are still governed by class boundaries (Bathmaker et al. 2016). Therefore, the equal distribution of opportunities remains an "illusion", as Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron have already noted in the 1960s (Bourdieu & Passeron 1990).

In this paper, which is part of my doctoral thesis, I explore a subject matter that has been gaining increasing attention during the past years: Upward mobility. Therefore, the experiences of university students who “escape” their supposedly predetermined fate and traverse class barriers move to the centre of attention (Jaquet 2014). While the experience of “outsiderness” (Lanford 2019) and the lack of fit to academic culture has been well described (Bathmaker et al. 2016; Schmitt 2010), little attention has been paid to the biographical transformations possibly taking place at university (Thunborg & Bron 2018). Considering this observation of a “deficit perspective" (Miethe 2017) in regard to the study of first-generation students at university, this paper focuses on transformations and the negotiation of belonging in higher education. The aim of my presentation is to examine biographical transformations of first-generation students at universities in Germany and Austria. Thus, the research project is interested in linked transitions, in particular how biographical and class transitions relate to one another.

More specifically, the contribution addresses the following research questions:

• How are transitions by first-generation students to and in higher education shaped, produced and experienced?
• How is a sense of belonging constructed in the field of university?
• Which arrangements of time, space, actors, and practices frame and navigate upward mobility in higher education?
• Which spaces of possibility for biographical and habitual transformation open up in the process?

Working with a theoretical framework that combines biographical approaches and subjectivation theory following Judith Butler (1997) with Bourdieu's concepts of field, habitus and milieu (Bourdieu 1984), the paper examines both the normalising and empowering dimensions of upward mobility. Thus, the empirical study is informed by a practice-theoretical view, connecting to theories that pursue the question of how subjects are produced through social practices. Butler's understanding of subjectivation focuses the production of subjects in power relations and the question of how subjects are 'called into' their social existence. Additionally, Bourdieu's theoretical tools are useful for understanding the narrow margins of subjectivation and the social limits of transformations. Building on these analytical perspectives allows to understand subjects in their social contexts and therefore examines "subject-context relations" (Dausien, Rothe & Schwendowius 2016), instead of conceiving them as isolated individuals.

Drawing on case studies of 24 first-generation students across higher education institutions in Austria and Germany, the project attempts to understand the complexity and biographical ambivalences of climbing up the educational ladder. Collecting different biographical data (biographical-narrative interviews, diary entries, autobiographical documents of one's educational path), allows to explore the powerful interrelatedness of discourses, institutions, and individuals. Transitioning to university hence appears as a non-linear, conflicting process of becoming.

To address the research question above, an empirical study was carried out at one Austrian and three German universities. Although most students at Austrian and German universities come from academic-experienced families, the generally increasing rates of educational participation led to a growing number of students whose parents did not attain tertiary education (Hauschildt et al. 2021). This development allows for findings that are comparable within a broader European context. In accordance with the principle of theoretical sampling in grounded theory methodology (Strauss & Corbin 1990), the sample of the study was developed in the course of the research process. The survey phase covers the period from 2019 to 2022. For the empirical investigation, first-generation students of Bachelor, Master or Doctorate programmes in the humanities and social sciences were selected. In focussing on these subject areas, the subject-specific cultures which shape the process of university socialisation were taken into account. The students were invited for biographical narrative interviews (Schütze, 1983) or to share written stories of their educational path. Whilst biographical interviews have been extensively described as a valuable approach to understanding student experiences in higher education (West, Bron & Merrill 2014), written stories prove to be a worthwhile addition to engage narratively with students. Whereas biographical interviews provide access to the students' university experience in relation to their life history, autobiographical documents of one's educational path invite more intimate and affective accounts. This can also be explained in terms of the researchers' absence from the production of data and the self-centred effect of written autobiographical documents. By the beginning of 2022, 17 interviews and 7 autobiographical written stories have been collected. The interviews ranged around two hours and were transcribed verbatim, the autobiographical written stories are 10 pages long on average. All collected data was analysed based on grounded theory methodology, guided by the assumption that the examination of biographies and (auto-)biographical testimonies can generate insights into social conditions and create knowledge about society. Thus, the focus of the method lies on reconstructing the students' perspectives on their way to university, their studies, and their interactions with their non-academic friends and families. Through a comparative analysis of how upward mobility is experienced among the study participants, different temporal, spatial and practical relations of biographical transformations at university can be traced. The analysis leads to the construction of a theory consisting of different conditions and modes of becoming academic at university.

Preliminary results draw attention to the sites, spaces, scenes and affects involved when doing class transitions. Especially the spaces and scenes at university that appear as sites of belonging seem crucial to the different modes of subjectivation of first-generation students in higher education. Thus, the spatial dimensions of upward mobility come into focus. University opens spaces of recognisability that allow students to experience themselves as academics and first-generation students at the same time and therefore has a substantial effect on establishing belonging and becoming academic. For example, meaningful exchange with professors in office hours, peer research and data analysis groups, at eye-level interactions with researchers and lecturers etc. Furthermore, different overlapping and intertwining transitions occurring on one's educational path need to be considered. The empirical analysis points to these linked transitions being important for understanding upward mobility: socio-geographical transitions (from the countryside to an urban area), transitions to adulthood, religious transitions etc. interplay with class transitions. Upward mobility thus involves complex transition management. Understanding the complexity of these transitions is significant for biographical transformations. Moreover, not only the field of university itself, but also the milieu of origin, the non-academic, mostly working-class homes, come into focus. Upward mobility can be considered a generational matter, that needs to be analysed within the specific familial constellations. Developing and negotiating a sense of belonging both at university and “at home” unfolds as a complex social, spatial, and affective practice. Explicitly focussing on the emancipatory aspects of these dimensions of becoming academic (sites of belonging, linked transitions, familial integration) can contrast previous findings and contribute to research on inequality on education.

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