From aspiration to attainment: Exploring the university access pathways of first-generation graduates from a West Coast town

This thesis investigates how five first-generation graduates from working-class towns constructed viable educational pathways in contexts marked by limited university participation. It examines the interplay of aspirations, space, time and mobility in shaping how they cultivated post-secondary aspirations within homes, schools and neighbourhoods; how they endured and adapted to arduous commuting arrangements; and how they negotiated the pedagogical, linguistic and cultural demands of university life. The study employs a layered framework that combines Appadurai’s (2004) capacity to aspire, Lefebvre’s (1991, 2004) spatial triad and rhythmanalysis, and Vickery’s (1977) time poverty to argue that first-generation graduates rhythmically negotiated uneven socio-spatial terrains through inventive practices that resisted geographical entrapment and challenged fatalistic pathways, thereby enabling alternative futures for access to higher education. Situated within an interpretivist paradigm, the study employed a retrospective and blended ethnographic design, described as ethnography on the move (Fataar, 2010, 2015, 2019), to explore how aspirant bodies, from constrained contexts, foster and mobilise alternative possibilities across disparate spaces. Data were collected over a twenty-four-month period (May 2023–May 2025) through semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, site visits and field notes. Findings reveal that realising aspirations within and across structurally unequal contexts requires the cultivation of inventive spatial, embodied, temporal and relational strategies. Participants developed forms of spatial literacy that enabled them to imaginatively transform constraining terrains into sites of possibility. Through bodily adaptation, they aligned comportment and movement with shifting social-spatial conditions. Temporal coordination allowed them to recalibrate rhythms across home, commute, campus and peer domains to align with institutional tempos. Finally, networks of support provided the relational infrastructure for sustaining aspirations through emotional, material and strategic resources.

Grantor dc:publisher

Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Davids, Lauren Olivia

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Fataar, Aslam

Language dc:language.iso

en

Repository record dc:identifier.uri

https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/134582

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/134582