Zombies, Ghosts and Lucky Survivors: Class Identities and Imposterism in Higher Education

This chapter considers the ways in which structures of inequality scaffold imposterism in the higher education landscape. This chapter highlights the journeys through Higher Education and the constructions of normativity and difference that create boundaries in everyday experiences of HE and (re)construct class identities. Rather than social mobility being seen as the answer to social inequality, and arrival in higher education as the key to social mobility, this chapter links with ideas of ‘intellectual phoniness’ associated with imposterism and argues that the journey into becoming ‘academic’ (or perhaps more broadly, socially mobile) is often fraught with disassociations of fit and belonging, intelligence, confidence and authenticity.