Alma Mater, Nourishing Mother? Women’s Longing and Belonging in Public Universities in Brazil and England

Abstract

This article explores how women who are first in their families to access higher education navigate belonging in two elite public universities: the University of Campinas (Unicamp) in Brazil and the University of Cambridge in England. Moving beyond metrics of access and diversity, it examines the emotional, structural, and epistemic challenges that shape students’ sense of belonging during their undergraduate studies. Through a transnational, intergenerational qualitative study based on narrative interviews and memory work, the research draws on the life stories of ‘daughters’—first-generation university students—and their ‘mothers,’ women who had limited access to formal education and no access to higher education. By including both generations, the study foregrounds how intergenerational longings for education shape women’s participation in higher education today. The findings show that despite more diverse student intakes, racialised, classed, and gendered exclusions continue to shape students’ experiences of higher education. Acts of care—whether material, emotional, or symbolic—offer partial forms of support, yet do not fully counterbalance the pressures of navigating elite institutions. Rather than simply informing policy, this article calls for a cultural shift: one that centres the experiences of under-represented women and reimagines the public university as a site of shared belonging, beyond tokenistic inclusion.