Class, Migration Status and Extra-Curriculum Activities of Bachelor Students

Students’ engagement in extracurricular activities during university studies, including social, cultural and intellectual ones, has a significant impact on academic performance, personal development and future career achievements. (Broh, 2002; Gibbs, Erickson, Dufu, Miles, 2014; Kaufman and Gabler, 2004). In number of articles is regarded as an example of student interaction, demonstrating how mechanisms of social reproduction operate. (Ball, Davies, David, Reay, 2002; Brooks, 2003; Stuber, 2006). The studies demonstrate that this participation is predetermined by class – inclusion to the extracurricular activities depends on the initial cultural resources of the student. A third framework suggests that the activities practiced by students during their free time and their inclusion into certain extracurricular activities can be connected to their migration status (Peguero, 2011). The current study is aiming to answer the following questions: What extracurricular activities are students participating in and what predetermines their inclusion? How do extracurricular activities reproduce social inequality? The current study focuses on local and migrant second-year students studying at HSE Saint-Petersburg, representing upper-middle and working class families. Through participation in extracurricular activities students have the opportunity to take cultural positions, orientations, and dispositions that could be used as a signal that they are worthy of inclusion in privileged classes. Working-class students lack cultural resources, which explains their weak involvement in extracurricular activities. Upper-middle-class students enter the university with cultural resources that contribute their involvement and social resources that facilitate their participation. Existing social and cultural resources for students, however, form their ability to obtain additional resources, thereby showing the functions of extra-class activity as a platform for social reproduction.