Habitus and stigma in classed HE transitions: a case study of working-class students undertaking a Foundation Year scheme at an elite university.

My proposed research explores the processes of socialisation which participants on the University of Cambridge's incipient Foundation Year programme undergo. The Foundation Year provides a free, year-long preparation for undergraduate study at Oxford to students from less advantaged backgrounds, often with lower grades than would usually be required for entry.

Using a new theoretical framework synthesising the work of Bourdieu on habitus and Goffman on stigma, my proposal considers the interplay of habitus and stigma in forming and reforming the discursivel constructed identities of participants in new social environments after undergoing long-range social mobility. It also examines how, in the specific case of the Foundation Year, non-traditional students and their peers challenge, support or shift the institutional consensus and norms (the 'institutional habitus') on social mobility and widening access to higher education. I will do this using a case-study approach, employing semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and walking and mapping methods to consider the dialogic effect which these interactions have on both parties.

Bourdieu's concept of habitus refers to the innate, unconscious dispositions which are shaped by early social experiences and heavily inform the way individuals interact with and view their social world. The concept is used extensively in the sociology of education to analyse the interactions of (particularly) working-class students with educational establishments. Goffman's work on stigma, conversely, assumes that social norms are formed explicitly by interaction with others at a conscious level; we learn acceptable and unacceptable norms by observing how others react to traits or behaviours. I propose synthesising these approaches to consider how pre-existing notions of habitus interact with newly developing stigmas to determine the responses of stigmatised individuals, and stigmatising environments, to each other.

The Foundation Year provides an excellent opportunity to do this; participants are doubly stigmatised through the visibility of both their social provenance and their academic record.

Their stigmatised presence challenges the hegemonic norm of 'democratic' or earned elitism which sustains the Oxford institutional habitus, and as such provides rich data for understanding the ways in which disruptive social mobility can affect individual and institutional habitus.

This work is particularly relevant given the regulatory pressure to improve access to selective institutions and contributes to greater understanding of the socialisation processes which affects traditional students who benefit from widening access interventions at elite institutions and the pastoral care they require. Furthermore, the data gathered on shifts to institutional views on Foundation Years and academic requirements will interest policymakers and senior admissions staff should it support some institutional malleability on conceptions of fixed academic ability