Literature

International literature on university populations has long recorded marked growth in both the volume and variety of students (Fitzgerald et al. 2012; Purcell et al. 2016). While this was primarily driven by neoliberal adherence to supply-side human capital theory (Brown et al. 2011) this was also infused with social justice rationales in terms of widening access to ‘non-traditional’ (aka first generation) learners, including those from wider racial and ethnic groups. It has been supplemented, too, with greater numbers of international students in an attempt to maintain host countries’ soft power and – through higher international student fees – offset the costs of increased domestic enrolments (Buckner and Zapp 2021).  

A more heterogeneous student population presents challenges in terms of support and augmented pedagogy (Lomer and Mittelmeier 2021), but is seen to additionally convey both personal as well as social benefits. In the first instance, research shows that meaningful interactions outside students’ sometimes narrow pre-university social groups can engender more inclusive attitudes and improved critical thinking and employability skills (Dunne 2017). Secondly, it is asserted that that intergroup contact can cumulatively lead to more prevalent understanding of, and respect for, cultural differences more broadly (Hudson and Rockenbach 2025a). This, many have argued, is one of higher education’s core purposes and as such should be actively fostered (Hurtado 2007). However, it is clear is that simply diversifying the student body is not enough since many higher education institutions remain hostile to those not drawn from its nationally dominant groups. Extensive scholarship highlights the wide-ranging difficulties faced by – among others – female, working class, ethnic minority, international, disabled, mature, and LGBTQI+ students (Deem et al. 2022).  

The majority of work around students’ experiences to date focuses on marginalised rather than dominant groups but there is relatively little work that considers multiple perspectives simultaneously (although see Dunne 2009; Keane 2011). Also, while what some call ‘boundary crossing’ (Hudson and Rockenbach 2025b) between social groups is known to have positive outcomes, this remains a somewhat neglected area, particularly as far as the lived experience of these interpersonal dynamics are concerned. This paper therefore examines how a diverse group of students at a large, high status university in England describes and understands their positions and experiences relative to the wider student population.  

Theoretical Framing

This paper applies Doreen Massey’s (2008; 2018) conceptualisation of space. In Massey’s work, spaces are interrelational areas where people and artefacts coalesce and interact. This allows us to see education institutions more richly by examining how their constantly changing cast of staff and learners – as well as ideas, texts, buildings, and so on – come into contact with one another and in the process be changed in some way (Brown and Schweisfurth 2024). In other words, rather than a place such as a campus being simply a neutral physical landscape, universities as spaces represent a transformational zone that is constantly in flux due to the interactions between whatever and whoever comes into contact.  Massey also highlights how these interrelations can be – in fact almost invariably are – hierarchical, and any investigation of a space therefore requires the inclusion of a multiplicity of perspectives. Massey’s work, while widely used in geography, has only been sparingly applied in higher education to date, largely around exploring the experiences of marginalised students (Samura 2018; Flint 2021).  However, it appears to have considerable value and as such is the theoretical lens adopted here in addressing the following research question:

How do students describe the student population of their university and the relations that mediate their experiences within it?

For this study, which sought to consider how students see and experience their position within their peer population, qualitative data was collected at ‘Russell University’, a large, high status, research-intensive university in England. As with other similar institutions, it is well placed on national and international rankings and hosts tens of thousands of students annually, with over a quarter of whom hailing from overseas. As such, it is diverse in some ways but is also socially selective because it has academically stringent admissions processes. Participant recruitment was undertaken by inviting participation in assorted classes, with a choice of taking part in an interview or focus group based on their preference and availability. While these can provide different kinds of data – largely due to the range and type of interactions – they are both appropriate for eliciting rich accounts of viewpoints and lived experiences (Wilson 2006; Dicicco-Bloom and Crabtree 2006). The lines of discussion focused on here relate to their descriptions of the university population and organisational culture, and with whom they did – and did not – interact, with analysis involving coding data according two core dimensions. The first explored which communities they described within the student population and the extent to which they saw those groups being porous or bounded. The second considered their own experiences in relation to those groups. The sample consisted of 42 students in a purposive, intentionally diverse sample designed to explore a multiplicity of perspectives, rather than focusing on particular groups as other studies have done. The sample was split almost evenly between under- and postgraduate students but leaned more towards women (none identified as non-binary) and the social sciences. The disciplinary mix was in part dictated by classroom access permissions granted by staff, with underrepresented subject students largely attending focus groups with friends in the social sciences. Just over a third of the participants were domestic students (i.e. British citizens) but over two thirds of the group (including many British participants) claimed all or partial heritage from the global majority.

Students saw the wider university population as predominantly White, affluent, and politically left-leaning, but also diverse and inclusive, with marked distinctions within the domestic population that were class-based and regional, as well as between domestic and international students. Furthermore, while in principle the university’s large and varied student body presented a panoply of opportunities for degree subject, class, race, nationality, and sexual orientation boundary-crossing, students were also hindered from achieving it. Some of this related to timetabling, which addressed the practical issue of allocating students across hundreds of degree courses to teaching spaces but in doing so corralled them into separated disciplinary groups. At the same time, community dynamics meant that the spaces within the university where students commonly congregated – such as the student union and accommodation – featured discernible and often impermeable social boundaries. This was also visible within classes and overall could be a source of stress when relations were difficult. Within this, many international students bemoaned their inability to develop friendships and intercultural exchanges with domestic students, which had been part of their rationale for studying overseas. Domestic students, on the other hand, often expressed the belief that those students were not simply interested in mixing with them. Research in this area to date has stressed that diversifying enrolments alone, while perhaps signalling an openness to boundary-crossing, does not by itself engender it. What this paper adds to that discussion is not only how and where it can – and does – happen, but also what hinders it. This reiterates that universities need to encourage and facilitate these interactions, rather than implicitly assuming that they will happen organically. Furthermore, considering this through the lens of Massey’s spaces further unpicks the dynamics of student interrelationality as characterised by unresolved tensions between hierarchically placed groups.

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