Geographic and Social Mobility of UK Higher Education Students

通过社会流动创造一个更公平的社会是英国政治议程上的重要议题。人们通常认为，通过各种政策和举措，扩大高等教育（HE）的参与，将等同于一个更公平、更具社会流动性的社会。然而，虽然越来越多的弱势群体正在进入高等教育，但社会流动性仍然很弱，这表明这是对英国等国家社会不平等（再）产生方式的过度简化的描述。就其在形成社会（im）流动性方面的重要性而言，在这个关键的过渡点上，年轻人的地理（im）流动性在这里很少提及。在像英国这样空间多样化的国家，进入大学、主要劳动力市场、社交网络和其他宝贵资源往往需要一定程度的地理流动性。因此，在解决更广泛的社会不平等问题时，了解英国不同地区学生流动的本质是至关重要的，包括不同年轻人在不同地方之间（非）流动的理由。已经有一些证据表明高等教育的成本可以阻止最弱势的年轻人离开学校去学习，但是其他基于地方的因素，包括当地的文化、社会和经济特征，在塑造学生的流动性方面可能很重要吗？这个跨学科项目将承担一个创新和深远的政策相关研究项目，解决英国高等教育学生的流动模式。这项研究的价值得到了所有四个英国高等教育资助委员会、英国政府的社会流动性和儿童贫困委员会（由艾伦·米尔本勋爵主持）、萨顿信托基金会和英国大学的认可。这些机构是项目持份者小组的成员，将密切参与研究和传播计划，确保研究涉及与政策相关的领域，并触及广泛的受众。这项新颖的研究将首次揭示英国四个国家内部和之间学生流动的本质，以及对他们如何形成的丰富而深入的理解。考虑到英国社会的社会、经济、政治和文化多样性，该项目将寻求理解教育决策的特殊性质。这种独特的工作本质上是跨学科的，借鉴并贡献了地理学、教育学和社会学等学科。该研究采用混合方法，并围绕两个不同但连续的阶段进行组织，其中包括对全英国学生记录数据的大规模定量分析（第一阶段），这将为新的定性数据的收集提供框架（第二阶段）。第一阶段将涉及先进的空间分析，以检查国家、地区和地方层面的学生流动，制作创新的图形，以视觉形式显示这些空间运动。这一分析将探讨学生运动与社会和空间特征之间的模式和关系。在第二阶段，定性研究将在英国各地有目的地选择的10所案例研究学校进行，这些学校是根据定量分析制定的标准选择的。为了探索影响年轻人流动模式的各种因素，数据收集将包括对年轻人的采访，他们的社会网络的两名成员，以及对他们学校背景的观察。这些丰富的定性数据将在定量模式的表面下挖掘，捕捉年轻人对空间的主观体验和他们自己的地理想象如何影响他们的地理（非）流动性。它将探讨这些关系的位置和流动性的意图是如何构建和影响他们的个人传记，社会网络和学校。

The creation of a fairer society through social mobility is high on the political agenda in the UK. It is often assumed that widening participation in higher education (HE), through various policies and initiatives, will equate to a fairer and more socially mobile society. Yet, while more disadvantaged groups are now progressing to HE, social mobility remains weak, suggesting that this is an over-simplified picture of the ways in which social inequalities are (re)produced in countries like the UK. The geographical (im)mobility of young people at this key transition point is rarely alluded to here, in terms of its significance in shaping social (im)mobility. In spatially diverse countries like the UK, access to universities, key labour markets, social networks, and other valuable resources often necessitate some degree of geographical mobility. In addressing social inequalities in wider society, it is therefore crucial to understand the nature of student flows across diverse parts of the UK, including the rationales different young people have for their (im)mobility to and from different places. There is already some evidence to suggest that the costs of HE study can deter the most disadvantaged young people from moving away for their studies, but what other place-based factors, including the cultural, social, and economic characteristics of localities might be important in shaping student (im)mobility? This interdisciplinary project will undertake an innovative and far-reaching programme of policy relevant research addressing the mobility patterns of UK HE students. The value of this research has been endorsed by all four UK HE Funding Councils, the UK Government's Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission (Chaired by Rt. Hon. Alan Milburn), The Sutton Trust, and Universities UK. These organisations are members of the project stakeholder group and will be closely involved in the research and dissemination programme, ensuring that the research addresses areas of policy relevance and reaches a wide audience. This novel research will uncover, for the first time, the nature of student flows within and across the four countries of the UK, together with rich and in-depth understandings about how they are shaped. Taking into account the socially, economically, politically and culturally diverse nature of UK society, the project will seek to understand the placed nature of educational decision making in particular. This unique work is interdisciplinary in nature, drawing on, and contributing to, the academic disciplines of geography, education, and sociology. The research is mixed methods and organised around two distinct but sequential phases, which include large scale quantitative analysis of UK-wide student records data (phase 1) that will frame the collection of new qualitative data (phase 2). Phase 1 will involve advanced spatial analysis to examine student flows at country, region, and locality levels, producing innovative graphics displaying these spatial movements in visual form. This analysis will explore patterns and relationships between student movements and social as well as spatial characteristics. In the second phase, qualitative research will take place in 10 purposefully selected case study schools across the UK, selected on the basis of criteria developed from the quantitative analysis. To explore the sorts of factors shaping young people's mobility patterns, data collection will involve interviews with young people, two members of their social network, as well as observation of their school contexts. These rich qualitative data will dig beneath the surface of the quantitative patterns, capturing how young people's subjective experiences of space and their own geographical imaginaries impact on their geographic (im)mobility. It will explore how these relationships to place and mobility intentions are constructed and influenced by their individual biographies, social network and school.