The negotiation of socio-spatial background among elite Chinese university graduates

An increasingly rich body of literature focuses on the relationship between socio-spatial background, emotional attachment to place, and aspirations surrounding higher education. In this paper, we foreground the connections between attachment to place, mobility, education and aspirations—links that are often implicit and seldom highlighted in the Chinese context. To do so, we develop a theoretical framework that integrates Bourdieu's theory of practice, alongside the concepts of suspension, neo-familism and individualisation. Drawing on interviews with 40 final-year master's degree students at an elite Chinese university, from three social class factions, we explore how socio-spatial inequality is embodied and reflected in the future aspirations of students, particularly in the form of attachments to (or lack thereof) particular places, and the internalisation of cultural logics that stigmatise rurality and associate it with ‘low quality’. These processes represent under-recognised means through which social stratification is embodied and reproduced in the Chinese context, creating additional barriers for non-affluent students from rural backgrounds in ‘keeping up’ with urban peers after graduation.