The academic and cultural practices of young people as modes of appropriation of the university space

Abstract

Youth and school life are two scenarios that converge in students as social agents who take part in the university field. Based on Pierre Bourdieu’s approach, this article addresses the heterogeneity of the academic and extracurricular strategies of young university students during their first year at Universidad Veracruzana, the main public university in the state of Veracruz in Mexico. The youth condition plays a central role in the capacity for agency of students who experience an initial period that is decisive for the shaping of their trajectories through higher education. We conducted a quantitative, exploratory, and comparative study of six academic disciplines to analyze the cultural and academic practices that students carry out both inside and outside of school, using a questionnaire to retrieve empirical information about the students as well as factor and bivariate analysis to analyze the results. Our main finding was a close link between academic and sociocultural practices and the disciplines that students studied in their first year at Universidad Veracruzana in the first year of studies. This relationship goes through the youthful condition of these social actors.