Content uploaded by Mark Holton
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Mark Holton on Dec 06, 2016
Content may be subject to copyright.
Examining students’ night-time activity spaces: identities, performances and
transformations
Holton, Mark (2016) – School of Geography, Earth, and Environmental Sciences,
Plymouth University
Cite this article: Holton, M. (2016). Examining student's night‐time activity spaces:
identities, performances, and transformations. Geographical Research.
Abstract
It has become increasingly clear that social activities play an important role for many UK
undergraduate students in informing identity and place attachment through interactions
with their term-time location. While attention has been given to the ways in which students
construct ‘exclusive geographies’ through self-segregation from non-students, there has,
thus so far, been very little discussion of how students’ identities may be affected by their
changing activity spaces and how this may blur the boundaries between student and non-
student spaces. Exploring these transformations over the duration of the degree is
important as they highlight how identity performances may be influenced by students’
transitions through University and their changing mobility patterns. This paper will address
this by considering: (1) how first year activity spaces may constitute a student bubble for
new undergraduates; (2) how, in subsequent years, these activity spaces adapt as
students hone their social practices and explore environments less associated with
student-life, and (3) how ‘local’ student’s activity spaces can become complex as they
contemplate locating their multiple identities during term-time.
Keywords
Students, higher education, identity, geography, activity space, night-time socialising
Introduction
Much consideration has been given in recent years to the ways in which undergraduate
students engage with ‘spaces of education’ (Smith et al., 2014), such as learning
environments (Reay et al., 2010), Student’s Unions (Brooks et al., 2015), sports societies
(Smith, 2004), halls of residences (Holton, 2016), shared housing (Smith and Holt, 2007)
and night-time socialising (Chatterton, 1999). These spaces, in many ways constitute a
‘student bubble’, whereby the constituent parts of students’ activity spaces merge together
to create a seemingly homogenous student identity. It is often implied within both the
popular and academic literature that such homogeneity exacerbates tensions between
student and non-student citizens, through incivility (Holt and Griffin, 2005), antisocial
behaviour (Hubbard, 2013) and self-segregation (Chatterton and Hollands, 2003),
culminating in what Chatterton (1999) terms ‘exclusive geographies’, in which students
separate away from their host communities. While work has examined students’ activity
spaces in terms of day-time activities (e.g. Crozier et al., 2008), this paper will explore
specifically how students consider their night-time activity spaces to examine more
critically these notions of exclusivity and how, through night-time socialising, students’
activity spaces may begin to merge with those of non-students.
Chatterton and Hollands (2003) refer to University towns and cities as ‘studentland’ where
the ‘student pound’ is capable of drawing in businesses and services into neighbourhoods
which would otherwise not have come. This is particularly pertinent as students have been
thought to account for approximately ten per cent of a University location’s economic
activity (Swinney, 2010). These complex forms of commodification within University
locations mean that students have increasingly been portrayed as powerful commodifiers
(Chatterton, 1999; Gibson, 2002), or ‘apprentice’ gentrifiers (Smith and Holt, 2007). Whilst
much of this increased economic activity stems from productivity, skills and innovation, the
city as a place for consumption, specifically through night-time socialising, plays a
particularly significant role in stimulating economic growth. For example, the Student
Income and Expenditure Survey (Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, 2013)
estimated that ‘entertainment’ made up sixteen per cent of a full time UK undergraduate
student’s average annual spend in 2011/12. This comprised £420 (43.5 per cent) on
alcohol consumed outside of the house, £122 (12.7 per cent) on sports, hobbies, clubs
and societies, £122 (16 per cent) on entrance fees to nightclubs and £108 (11.2 per cent)
on alcohol for consumption at home1. What these figures suggest is that while students
outlay significant amounts of money on entertainment, the emphasis on alcohol
expenditure highlights the important role night-time socialising plays for many students in
forming place attachment through interactions with their term-time location.
Hägerstrand’s (1970) understanding of activity spaces will be useful in examining these
issues, particularly in observing the ways in which students’ mental maps of their term-
time location may be affected by their changing tastes for night-time social activities.
Golledge and Stimson (1997) suggest that activity space is the confluence of which all of
a person’s daily activities occur. They comprise movement to and from the home, regular
activity locations (e.g. work, school etc.) and the movements in and around these
activities. What is important here is that such activity spaces are vital for our
understandings of and attachments to locations which can build and develop over time.
Hence, understanding the flexibility of students’ activity spaces will extend previous
research by examining notions of how UK HE students use night-time social activities as
tools for [re]negotiating their identities as they transition through University. While
Chatterton (1999) suggests that first year students may cluster in groups to “learn the
rules of the student game” (p. 120), Hollands (1995) and Chatterton and Hollands (2002)
suggest that second and third year students can become experimental with their
1 This figure also includes £160 (16.6 per cent) spent on household items and electronics worth over £50.
socialising in order to ‘unlearn’ these rules and develop more individual identities. This
research will critique this by examining the spaces in which students socialise in order to
provide a link between how students modify their social behaviour year on year and the
coping mechanisms used by the participants as they considered their journeys through
University. The rest of this paper will be divided into seven sections. The following two
sections will explore the literature pertaining to the geographies of youthful identities and
student’s night-time social spaces. After describing the methods, sections five, six and
seven will observe (1) how the first year may constitute a student bubble for new
undergraduates; (2) how social practices adapt as students move into subsequent years
and (3) how ‘local’ students locate their multiple identities during term-time. The final
section will conclude by examining how these notions of student identities contribute to
wider discussions of the geographies of students.
Youth identities
Lawler (2008) states that the task of defining identity is an impossible one, particularly as
identity can be negotiated both in terms of similarity and difference, making our identities
both dynamic and durable (Hopkins, 2010). For young people, identities can be
considered transitory, or a state of ‘becoming’ future selves (Worth, 2009) which may take
circuitous, non-linear pathways into adulthood (Valentine, 2003). Identities are formed
relationally, in that they rely on being formed through not being the same as another
identity. While identities may be thought to be individualised, they are also socially
constructed through social relations and replicated to give them agency (Hopkins, 2010).
Anderson (2010) argues that youth identities have been produced, and reproduced for
generations, with ‘neo-tribal’ groups (Maffesoli, 1988) constructing their own particular
identities and places in which to express them. Such tribal affiliations are very often
experimental, making them ephemeral and transitory points of youth. Malbon (1998)
explores the intersections between spaces and identities for young people and suggests
that group membership may not necessarily be as important when going out at night as
the spatial and cultural contexts of the environments young people choose to socialise in,
however fleetingly. Here, it is the performance of identities which becomes important,
particularly the ways in which embodied identities are expressed in certain contexts
(Butler, 1990) or places take on identities through their associations with certain practices
(Goffman, 1959). Hence ‘locating’ identities emphasises the fluidity of identities and how
they are created and expressed strategically, and in relation to others (Gabriel, 2006;
Easthope and Gabriel, 2008; Worth, 2009; Lobo, 2013).
Student’s night-time social spaces
Discourses of the ‘student experience’ have gained prevalence in recent years (Chow and
Healey, 2008), with research emphasising the importance of student-centric night-time
social spaces (such as the Students’ Union and other bars and nightclubs) in generating
bonds and attachments during term-time (Holt and Griffin, 2005; Hubbard, 2013).
Chatterton (1999) suggests that students often use these social bonds as mechanisms
with which to self-segregate away from other non-students, creating ‘exclusive
geographies’. Holt and Griffin (2005) and Chatterton and Hollands (2003) point out that
this process of appropriating night-time social spaces is primarily espoused through
specific popular culture infrastructure directed specifically at the student market, such as
student-only nights in pubs and nightclubs in the city; tiered entrance fees or targeted
marketing strategies aimed at excluding – or at the very least discouraging non-students.
In many ways these separated student spaces represent the ‘divided city’ and may
exacerbate the potential for resentment and conflict from local, non-students (see:
Holdsworth, 2009a; Bancroft, 2012; Wilkinson, 2015). This is particularly relevant as
mainstream student nights have been observed by some as reinforcing many of the
uncivilised discourses associated with student behaviour, which promote “hedonistic
pleasure-seeking, drinking and sex/coupling” (Hubbard, 2013, p. 267). Andersson et al.
(2012) offer a counterpoint to these notions of solidarity, arguing that such student-centric
spaces can become sites of marginalisation if certain groups are prevented from
participating in activities. They employ Massey’s (2005, p. 151) concept of
‘throwntogetherness’ – “the chance that space may set us down next to the unexpected
neighbour” – to highlight how the seemingly heterogeneous ‘student life’ can become
inaccessible for those who do not fit a pre-defined ‘student identity’ (see also: Taulke-
Johnson, 2008; Holdsworth, 2009a; Fincher and Shaw, 2009; Jones, 2014). Moreover,
linking such discourses to the above notions of self-segregation highlights the potential for
issues of position and privilege which favour the dominant social group – often white,
middle-class, heterosexual and secular – defined by Andersson et al (2012) as ‘campus
insiders’, with more marginal groups positioned as ‘other’. This homogeneity may deem
certain social environments, such as Students’ Unions, inappropriate spaces for non-
heterosexual (Taulke-Johnson, 2008) or non-drinking (Andersson et al., 2012) cultures.
In developing these linkages between night-time social spaces and identity formation,
there has, so far, been very little discussion of how students’ tastes for night-time social
activities may begin to evolve beyond these spaces over the duration of the degree (see
Hollands, 1995; 2002 for notable exceptions). Exploring how students make sense of the
student and non-student elements of their term-time location during their time at
University will provide the main focus of this paper. This will be achieved by exploring the
linkages between identity and the spaces in which these identities are performed as they
progress through their degrees.
Methodology
The data for this paper were collected as part of a wider research project focusing upon
the ways in which undergraduates from the University of Portsmouth established a ‘sense
of place’ in their term-time University location (see Holton and Riley, 2014). Thirty one
‘walking interviews’ were conducted with full time undergraduate students during the
spring/summer of 2012 and willing participants were recruited through a web-based
survey. The students were accompanied on self-directed walks around the city, each
lasting approximately an hour-and-a-half. The participants were encouraged to choose
two to three locations within Portsmouth which they visited regularly and represented their
student identities (e.g. places where they socialised at night, went shopping, ate out, or
met with friends to study, as well as tourist spots or communal spaces, such as the
seafront or local parks)2. The self-directed nature of the routes meant they replicated, as
much as possible, ‘natural’, every day journeys (Kusenbach, 2003). For ethical and
practical reasons, the walking interviews were conducted during the day, meaning
discussions of the night-time activities were occasionally taken out of their temporal
context. Nevertheless, the place-based nature of the encounters was highly evocative,
encouraging the participants to provide some very deeply contextual narratives of their
night-time activities. These reflexive encounters moved well beyond simple recall to
encompass the participants’ broader connections with their term-time location. Interviews
were audio recorded using a handheld voice recorder carried by the participant to give
them greater control over the direction of the journey. The audio data were transcribed
and analysed using the computer-aided qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS)
package Atlas.ti.
2 The UK’s only island city, Portsmouth has a population of 197,614 with a population density of, on average 5000
people per km2, making it the UK’s most densely populated city by area outside of London. Portsmouth has a large
youth population with 33.6 percent under 25, three per cent higher than the national average (PCC, 2012), reflecting
Portsmouth’s large student population. In 2012-13 The University of Portsmouth had 22,709 students constituting
eleven percent of the city’s population, comprising: 18,878 (83 percent) full time and 3,831 (17 percent) part time
students, with 18,889 (83 percent) undergraduates and 3,217 (17 percent) postgraduates.
The demographic representation of the participants reveals that the sample leans towards
being young (68 per cent), female (65 per cent), white and British (both 90 per cent).
Whilst this does not by any means constitute an evenly represented sample, the
distribution here does broadly compare with that of the composition of the University of
Portsmouth in 2012. Crucially, the year groups are fairly evenly represented with around a
third from each. Eighteen of the participants had left home to live in term-time student
accommodation at the time of the interviews, with 12 living a commutable distance from
home; four had left their home region for University while the final two participants were
international students. For the remaining 13 students that were living with parents or in
their own homes, all of them considered themselves to be ‘local’ students, even though
some were living up to 15 kilometres from the city. Recognising such [im]mobilities is
important as they can be indicative of how students negotiate relationships and
connections with their term-time locations (Holdsworth, 2006; 2009; Holton, 2015a;
2015b) and reflects the relatively local mobility patterns discussed by Duke-Williams
(2009b) and Holdsworth (2009b).
The student bubble
As suggested earlier, this notion of the student bubble can be interpreted through the lens
of ‘activity space’ (Hägerstrand, 1970; Golledge and Stimson, 1997). While many of the
participants alluded to the student bubble as being homogenous, further investigation
reveals complex and hierarchical interconnections between the activities these
participants were involved in (e.g. interacting during lectures, in the library, halls of
residences or on campus etc.) and how these often became interlaced with night-time
social interactions:
“I live in [hall] right on Guildhall Walk which is right on the doorstep. You’ve got everything,
Wetherspoons on the corner, the Union, everything revolves around that small space”
(David, Y1).
“Sometimes we’ll meet here [the library] quite late and do a bit of study, then we might go
“let’s take a break” and going for a pint in the Union or back to someone’s hall to watch a
movie or something. It’s all pretty laidback” (Peter, Y1).
These comments suggest a perceived fluidity between learning, living and social
environments for first year students in which identities can be developed and performed in
safety. While halls of residences have been viewed as highly significant in the emergence
of student identities (Hubbard, 2009), the narrow geographies based around first year
accommodation, socialising and studying appear to intensify the student experience and
make social interactions less complicated. Importantly, the spaces themselves are crucial
in developing student identities as they provide context to young, experimental identities
(Malbon, 1998). Holt and Griffin (2005) highlight the territorialisation of such neo-tribal
behaviours by suggesting that students quickly learn to appropriate certain night-time
environments as their own and develop their own tactics for excluding non-students
through their attendance of student-only nights. These notions of self-segregation and the
appropriation of space were evident among the research cohort being studied here with
almost all participants living in student accommodation discussing how they actively
disengaged from the local non-student population at night:
“I guess a lot of things are separated from locals like student nights, you’re not allowed in
them if you’re not a student so that separates us from locals. The fact that we are so
concentrated as students, the locals don’t really get a chance” (Ben, Y1).
“Student nights have a great atmosphere because we are all like here for three years and
you don’t want to upset anyone, you’re friendly, you have more in common with these
people. Whereas the local people, they’re lovely, I cannot say a bad word about them, I’ve
never had a really bad experience but I have had moments where I’ve been in places on a
Saturday night where I feel that it’s a little bit rough, I’m a little bit on edge” (Rory, Y1).
While these findings align with Holt and Griffin's (2005) labelling of our spaces and their
spaces, the responses above suggest temporal and spatial hierarchies may be formulated
which place the students above their non-student counterparts. Borrowing from Lefebvre
(1991), this domination of space, albeit seasonally, by students reconfigures the night-
scape according to their particular needs. This implies a delineation between student and
non-student spaces, with students using both their territorialised behaviour, and the
structures put in place by University managers and club owners, to demarcate space for
their exclusive use, Naturally, University students are not the principle group within
University towns and cities (in Portsmouth, undergraduate students constitute only eleven
per cent of the overall population), but their seasonality and concentration adjacent to the
University, such as the Guildhall area and parts of Fratton and Southsea, can be enough
to give them a visible presence within the city during term time. Crucial to this is the
conspicuous branding of student nights in Freshers3 bars and nightclubs. Student club-
night promoters, such as Eskimo11, have been in existence in Portsmouth since 2008 and
have made their presence felt widely across many Portsmouth nightspots, assisting with
providing safer social environments for students across multiple days of the week. In the
context of this analysis, the involvement of these promoters create places in which first
year students may perceive it important to be seen and which project certain images of
solidarity. Students obviously do not all move in exactly the same social spheres
according to their year group, yet the territorialisation of social spaces discussed by the
participants appears to perpetuate Chatterton’s (1999) notions of exclusive geographies.
Moreover, these first year activity spaces are also generally considered the most
appropriate environments for new undergraduates to socialise as they contain many of
3 ‘Fresher’ or ‘freshman’ derives from the British or American term for a first year University student.
the right ingredients useful for first year students to establish a ‘Fresher’’ identity and to fit
in quickly among their peers.
Moving on - opening up the city
Once students had left the first year, they often began to ‘unlearn the rules of the student
game’ (Chatterton, 1999, p. 122). This was expressed through their adapting activity
spaces, whereby the second and third year participants sought out alternative social
spaces within which to hone and personalise their student identities beyond the more
traditional student-centric spaces. For those living in student accommodation, this
broadening of the students’ ‘geographies’ of Portsmouth corresponded with their moving
into other residential parts of the city and was expressed as a desire to establish a
stronger and more expansive attachment to their term-time location away from the more
typical Freshers’ environments. This develops previous literature by suggesting that these
alternative social environments are constitutive of, what may be termed as ‘quasi
[non]student’ spaces – defined here as night-time social spaces, often run by student-
friendly promoters, in which students can socialise inconspicuously among non-students
whilst remaining in the relative security of their peers. This aligns with Giddens’ (1991)
notion of lifestyle, through which certain behaviours and practices “give material form to a
particular [individualised] narrative of self-identity” (p. 81). Here, these participants were
considering their lifestyle changes – in the main – through the transition from halls to
rented housing and reflected their progression away from their ‘Freshers’ identities’. This
was evident within the walking interviews when the participants chose to visit social
locations, often away from the more traditional Freshers nights, which better suited their
evolving social identities:
‘My fiancé’s friend plays in a band so we’ll go to places when they’re playing, lots
of open mike nights and we find new places doing that and they’re often less
typically studenty [sic] pubs’ (Kay, Y2).
‘Tomorrow I’m going to The Barn [underground music venue], I’ve never heard of
where that is but we’ll find out when we get there, which is a bit better because we
don’t know what the night is going to be like’ (Tim, Y2).
‘[...] over there [Students’ Union] you’ve got the ‘University of Portsmouth’ in big
black letters and you’ve got the Union written there and everyone naturally
associates the Union with students. I’d say the Registry [pub opposite] is a little
less obvious, fewer people know about it and what goes on there’ (Paul, Y2).
These accounts demonstrate how such quasi [non]student spaces may be important in
transgressing the traditional student/non-student binary which has been defined
previously (see: Chatterton, 1999; Chatterton and Hollands, 2003; Holt and Griffin, 2005;
Wattis, 2013). This was evident in the ease of movement between seemingly student and
non-student spaces while walking around the city and the ways in which this opened up
the city for them. This extends the suggestion that students in their second and third year:
“start to explore city life more in terms of their musical tastes, peer group interests and
youth cultural identity” (Hollands, 1995, p. 31). In a sense, the participants expressed a
form of ‘stylistic non-conformity’ (Weber, 1999) in which they were keen to experiment with
alternative identities but in carefully managed social spaces. These quasi [non]student
nights are often managed by student promoters, or have inconspicuous links to Students’
Unions meaning users can socialise in ‘local’ spaces whilst remaining in the security and
comfort of their peer group. Importantly, the findings from this research highlight how
these spaces need not be located far from the traditional Freshers social spaces
(interestingly, none of the participants mentioned using (or having access to) private
vehicles to visit places further away from the city). Overlaps are present between the
student-centric and quasi [non]student spaces in Portsmouth which differ from
Chatterton’s (1999) research location in Bristol, in which the student and non-student
spaces were clearly delineated. Hence these quasi [non]student spaces highlight the
heterogeneity of students’ activity spaces by providing a social stimulus which suits the
tastes of the student, rather than necessitating a need to ‘fit in’ with the more mainstream
activities.
Nevertheless, it is important to recognise that the interview participants who sought out
quasi [non]student spaces exhibited few signs of being interested in making meaningful
connections with the non-students who frequented them:
‘I don’t really know any non-student people in Portsmouth. […] I have met some
locals but no, they haven’t become friends’ (Lisa, Y3).
‘My housemate, her boyfriend isn’t a student. He lives in Portsmouth and he’s got
his group of friends so I go along with her for moral support and whatever. So I do
have a small, like group of acquaintances who are non-students but I wouldn’t
really class them as friends. We do go out occasionally or go to house parties but
I wouldn’t opt to go out with them, if I wasn’t invited by my housemate’ (Claire,
Y2).
As these comments imply, inclusion within quasi [non]student spaces is not necessarily
equal to integrating within the local community for many of the students within the study.
Instead, this is more about making use of specific elements of these spaces which may
afford students opportunities to establish more nuanced attachments to place within their
term-time location. While this concurs with Hollands’ (1995) and Chatterton’s (1999)
proposals that students ‘un-learn’ previously learned behaviours as they move between
year groups, the participants’ behaviours suggest that they might in fact have been
learning the rules to a different game entirely, a game which enable them to renegotiate
their former first year identities and contrast them against the ones they began to form in
later years. The following quotes demonstrate how this transformation from the more
homogenous first year social spaces over to these quasi [non]student spaces may be
indicative of keenness among some students to reject their Fresher identities:
‘I think it’s easy to be in a student bubble. It definitely was last year, only talking to
students, only doing student things and it’s quite nice to know the city beyond that,
a typical student life is actually quite limited with the things you do’ (Kay, Y2).
‘I think it is nice being in a local place rather than just being in a place which is
exclusively for students. I like having a mix of people, I might start chatting to
someone. It’s nice to chat to someone who isn’t a student sometimes’ (Lisa, Y3).
What these comments hint at is that, rather than falling into step with their year group – as
with the more homogenous ‘student bubble’ of first year, activity spaces become more
distinctive as students progress into subsequent years. This is particularly important as
Axhausen (2007) argues that a person’s activity spaces changes according to the
selectivity of their social networks, yet as these comments imply, among the participants,
this may also be through increased knowledge and experimentation. As Anderson (2010)
suggests, youthful identities are liminal and, in the case of these interviewees, highly
individualised as they experience differently their transitions through University,
particularly as these identities are formed in relation to the myriad of influential ‘characters’
in their lives (e.g. peers, parents or those in authority etc.) (Valentine, 2003). While the
students in their first year were relating their identities to non-students, this became more
complex as they moved into subsequent years. By expanding their activity spaces to
other, more alternative social spaces, the participants were also establishing identities in
relation to other students. It would, of course, be naive to assume that these types of
behaviours are unique to students – adapting and developing social tastes are common
traits among all young people. What is important here is that, for many of these young
adults, they are living away from home, often for the first time, and are developing their
tastes away from their established peer group and in locations, often incongruent to their
non-student familial homes. Hence, while Gabriel (2006) suggests that mobility makes
students’ identities unstable through the action of leaving for (and returning from)
University, this analysis nuances this further by suggesting iterative process of leaving and
returning during and between term-time makes these transformations more complex and
individual.
Local students - moving differently through the ‘student game’
Related to the experiences of the more ‘typical’ students living in student accommodation
who had left home to go to University were those who were living at home, either with
parents, partners or spouses – termed here ‘local’ students (after Holdsworth, 2009a). For
these students, living at home may present interesting challenges when considering
accessing social activities (e.g. through differences in age, responsibilities and proximities
to the city centre etc.) and highlights the nuanced complexities of the ‘student experience’.
In this sense, Holdsworth (2009a) argues that local students may struggle to reconcile
their student and non-student identities because they often exist between two-worlds:
“I think they [student friends] want to stay in the city where things are more
obviously happening. I have introduced them to one friend from home and it is
strange when you combine the two because they’re talking about two very different
worlds, and there was almost a bit of a divide because they kept talking about
university and I had to keep encouraging them to talk about other things because
of my friend who didn’t go to university. It’s very easy to stick to what you know I
think” (Helen, Y2).
Helen’s experience emphasises the complications faced by local students when trying to
draw together the potentially incompatible aspects of their student and non-student
identities. This notion of ‘two worlds’ was present in all the interviews and appeared to be
the case no matter what year group the participants were in (see also: Holdsworth, 2009a;
Holton, 2015b). In the context of the previous discussions of neo-tribalism, Helen’s
comment implies that local students may experience complications trying to mix ‘old’ non-
student identities with their ‘new’ student ones, meaning they may have to manage
separate social groupings to maintain equilibrium. Nevertheless, some of the participants
indicated ways in which they managed to ameliorate these differences. The following
contrasting accounts by Nina and Sarah, both mature students4 who live outside of the
city, indicate the complexities of negotiating their identities:
“It’s funny, I feel like when I’m here [at University] as a student I’m a visitor. I feel
different when I come here at the weekend which is why I picked two places which I
go to at night. For me this [the Fleet pub] represents me being a student whereas
Gunwharf [Quays] represents me being me, away from Uni [sic] because I use
different places with different people” (Nina, Y2).
“If we [husband] are out in Portsmouth we come here, the Albert Road area rather
than the Gunwharf area, it’s all a bit posey [sic]. I mean, it’s a bit more relaxed, laid
back here [in Albert Road], whereas if you go out on the other side of town around
Gunwharf its too studenty [sic]” (Sarah, Y1).
These contrasting interpretations of Portsmouth’s night-spots (particularly Gunwharf
Quays, which is identified here as both a student (Sarah) and non-student (Nina) location)
reinforce the heterogeneity of students’ activity spaces, and highlights the importance of
4 In the UK context, mature students can constitute anyone over the age of 21.
their perceptions of what such spaces represent through certain activities which are
performed there. Hence, it may not necessarily be as clear cut as the spaces themselves
which produce student identities, more-so the activities and perceptions of what these
activities might offer which influence the ways in which students’ night-time identities are
performed.
Nevertheless, by designating contrasting identities to specific places within the city, Nina
and Sarah’s comments emphasise how the flexibility of student identities can be just as
prevalent for those who elect to remain local during term-time (Holton, 2015c). These
students’ have clearly thought carefully about how their identities might be expressed to fit
different social situations. While this aligns with Malbon’s (1999) notion of moving between
social groups, this was enacted more to stabilise their identities rather than experiment
with more fleeting attachments (Anderson, 2010). Borrowing Worth’s (2009) notion of
transitional identities, the action of relating identities to places allows Nina and Sarah to
draw upon specific elements of the Self which provide both a mechanism for ‘fitting in’
among various peer groups but also affords opportunities to move both within and
between social groups and constructing stronger place attachments within each of these
locations.
That said, some of the local participants, while maintaining distinctions between their
student and non-student activity spaces, occasionally bridged the gap by introducing their
fellow students to non-student nights out, presenting opportunities to expose their friends
to the world outside of the student bubble:
“Tiger’s student night is on a Monday but on a Thursday they’d [student friends] all go to
Liquid and I despise that. In first year and more towards the second half of second year I
recommended we go to Tiger on a Thursday night because that’s when I go and it’s my
favourite night and they’ve started doing that now and they’re more welcoming to it, at first
they were like “why would we do that?” It just mixes it up a little, although it’s the same
place there’s a lot of different people for the university people because obviously there are
a lot of the home people that go on a Thursday” (Dawn, Y3).
While there may differences in the ways in which local and non-local students manage their night-
time activity spaces, Dawn’s comment implies that local students’ knowledge of spaces beyond
the student bubble hold a great deal of currency in facilitating more experimental nights out for
non-local students. This research cannot suggest that all encounters with non-student socialising
are led primarily through the knowledge of local students, but it can certainly problematise the
exclusivity of student socialising (Chatterton, 1999), particularly the fluidity between the types of
interactions which might occur.
Conclusion
In conclusion, by exploring students’ activity spaces this paper has examined the
complexities of [re]negotiating student identities for undergraduates as they progress
through HE and how this notion of the transitory social experiences of students adds to
notions of youth and HE transitions. Consistent with Holdsworth and Morgan (2005), this
research has sought to look between the points at which students commence and
conclude their University experience in order to gain a clearer understanding of how these
processes might take place. This was achieved through an examination of how students
might link identities with night-time social activities within their term-time location and how
these associations adapt in line with subsequent reconfigurations of students’ activity
spaces. This adds to discussions of youth transitions by suggesting that the more typical
activity spaces associated with being Freshers might constitute a ‘student bubble’. While
this may be useful in setting the tone for many undergraduates, this may be considered
homogenous and not necessarily befitting of the evolving or ‘maturing’ social identities of
all students. Recognising how the spaces in which students interact may affect identity
performances extends Chatterton’s (1999) and Holt and Griffin’s (2005) suggestions that
first year students seek collective identities in order to develop safe social spaces away
from other non-students by suggesting that students may begin to exhibit more
individualised dynamic agency in expressing their social behaviours.
Moreover, by examining the different year groups and the participants’ contrasting
mobilities, this analysis has also established the importance of recognising both the
relational and transformative qualities of the student identity. This research is, of course,
not trying to imply that all students fall into step with their year group, and, in line with
other investigations of youthful activity spaces (e.g. Villanueva et al., 2012), the students’
agency of mobility made them flexible in moving beyond their expected ‘buffers’. That
said, there were certainly tendencies for the year groups within the study to follow the
patterns of mobility suggested in the analysis. Hence, while Gabriel (2006) discussed the
difficulties faced by graduates returning home from University in articulating their student
identities, this research has revealed the intricacies faced by undergraduates during
University as they [re]negotiate their adapting identities. It is important to recognise that,
far from being homogenous – as the rhetoric might suggest (Holdsworth, 2009a), these
identities are heterogeneous, being influenced by a myriad of factors (e.g. activity spaces
and how their location, fashions and tastes year of study etc.). What is crucial here is that
these identities were at once embodied and spatialised and performed strategically in
order to gain acceptance or social recognition among peers (Butler, 1990; Malbon, 1998;
Worth, 2009). Hence, the student identity is not simply a discrete ‘phase’ for young
people, but an intricate collection of different identities which adapt as students’
appreciation of their term-time location changes and they are introduced to new spaces
and ways of socialising.
References
Anderson J (2010) Understanding Cultural Geography: Places and Traces. Routledge,
London.
Andersson J, Sadgrove J, Valentine G (2012) Consuming Campus: Geographies of
Encounter at a British University. Social and Cultural Geography 13, 501-515.
Axhausen KW (2007) Activity Spaces, Biographies, Social Networks and their Welfare
Gains and Externalities: Some Hypotheses and Empirical Results. Mobilities 2, 15-36.
Bancroft A (2012) Drinking with and Without Fun: Female Students' Accounts of Pre-
Drinking and Club-Drinking. Sociological Research Online, 17, 7.
Brooks R, Byford K, Sela K (2015) The Changing Role of Students’ Unions within
Contemporary Higher Education. Journal of Education Policy 30, 165-181.
Butler J (1990) Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, New York.
Chatterton P (1999) University Students and City Centres: the Formation of Exclusive
Geographies. The Case of Bristol, UK. Geoforum 30, 117-133.
Chatterton P, Hollands R (2002) Theorising Urban Playscapes: Producing, Regulating and
Consuming Youthful Nightlife City Spaces. Urban Studies 39, 95-116.
Chatterton P, Hollands R (2003) Urban Nightscapes: Youth Cultures, Pleasure Spaces
and Corporate Power. Routledge, London.
Chow K, Healey M (2008) Place Attachment and Place Identity: First Year
Undergraduates Making the Transition from Home to University. Journal of Environmental
Psychology 28, 362-372.
Crozier G, Reay D, Clayton J, Colliander L, Grinstead J (2008) Different Strokes for
Different Folks: Diverse Students in Diverse Institutions – Experiences of Higher
Education. Research Papers in Education 23, 167-177.
Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DfIUS). 2013. Student income and
expenditure survey 2011/12: English-domiciled Students [online]. Department for
Innovation, Universities and Skills. Available from:
hhttps://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/301467/bis
-14-723-student-income-expenditure-survey-2011-12.pdf [Accessed 11 February 2016].
Duke-Williams O (2009) The Geographies of Student Migration in the UK. Environment
and Planning A 41, 1826-1848.
Easthope H, Gabriel M (2008) Turbulent Lives: Exploring the Cultural Meaning of
Regional Youth Migration. Geographical Research 46, 172-182.
Fincher R, Shaw K (2009) The Unintended Segregation of Transitional Students in Central
Melbourne. Environment and Planning A 41, 1884-1902.
Gabriel M (2006) Youth Migration and Social Advancement: how Young People Manage
Emerging Differences between Themselves and their Hometown. Journal of Youth
Studies 9, 33-46.
Gibson C (2002) Rural Transformation and Cultural Industries: Popular Music on the New
South Wales Far North Coast. Australian Geographical Studies 40, 337-356.
Giddens, A (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age.
Polity Press, Cambridge.
Goffman E (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Anchor, Garden City, NY.
Golledge R, Stimson R (1997) Spatial Behaviour. Guilford, London.
Hagerstrand T (1970) What About People in Regional Science? Papers in Regional
Science. 24, 6-21.
Holdsworth C (2006) ‘Don’t you Think you’re Missing Out, Living at Home?’: Student
Experiences and Residential Transitions. Sociological Review 54, 495-519.
Holdsworth C (2009a) Between Two Worlds: Local Students in Higher Education and
‘Scouse’/Student Identities. Population, Space and Place 15, 225-237.
Holdsworth C (2009b) `Going Away to Uni’: Mobility, Modernity, and Independence of
English Higher Education Students. Environment and Planning A 41, 1849-1864.
Holdsworth C, Morgan D (2005) Transitions in Context: Leaving Home, Independence and
Adulthood. Open University Press, Maidenhead.
Hollands R (1995) Friday Night, Saturday Night: Youth Identification in the Post-Industrial
City. University of Newcastle upon Tyne: Department of Sociology.
Hollands R (2002) Divisions in the Dark: Youth Cultures, Transitions and Segmented
Consumption Spaces in the Night-Time. Economy Journal of youth studies 5, 153-171.
Holt M, Griffin C (2005) Students Versus Locals: Young Adults’ Constructions of the
Working-Class Other. British Journal of Social Psychology 44, 241–267.
Holton M (2015a) Adapting Relationships with Place: Investigating the Evolving Place
Attachment and ‘Sense of Place’ of UK Higher Education Students During a Period of
Intense Transition. Geoforum 59, 21-29.
Holton M (2015b) ‘I Already Know the City, I Don't Have to Explore it’: Adjustments to
‘Sense of Place’ for ‘Local’ UK University Students. Population, Space and Place 21, 820-
831.
Holton, M (2015c) Learning the Rules of the ‘Student Game’: Transforming the ‘Student Habitus’
Through [Im]Mobility. Environment and Planning A 47, 2373-2388.
Holton, M (2016) The Geographies of UK University Halls of Residence: Examining
Students' Embodiment of Social Capital. Children's Geographies14, 63-76.
Holton M, Riley M (2014) Talking on the Move: Place-Based Interviewing with
Undergraduate Students. Area 46, 59-65.
Hopkins P E (2013) Young People, Place and Identity. Routledge, London.
Hubbard P (2009) Geographies of Studentification and Purpose-Built Student
Accommodation: Leading Separate Lives? Environment and planning A 41, 1903-1923.
Hubbard P (2013). Carnage! Coming to a Town Near You? Nightlife, Uncivilised Behaviour
and the Carnivalesque Body. Leisure Studies 32, 265-282.
Jones RD (2014) University Challenges: Negotiating Secularism and Religiosity in Higher
Education Institutions. Environment and Planning A 46, 1983-1999.
Kusenbach M (2003) Street Phenomenology: the Go-Along as Ethnographic Research
Tool. Ethnography 4, 455-485.
Lawler S (2008) Identity: Sociological Perspectives. Polity Press, Cambridge.
Lefebvre H (1991) The Production of Space. Blackwell: Oxford.
Lobo M (2013) Reinscribing and Inhabiting the City: Young Women Students from Asia
make Melbourne Home. Geographical Research 51, 153-158.
Maffesoli M, Foulkes CR (1988). Jeux de Masques: Postmodern Tribalism. Design Issues
4, 141-151.
Malbon B (1998) Clubbing: Consumption, Identity and the Spatial Practices of Every-Night
Life. In Skelton T, Valentine G (eds) Cool places: Geographies of youth cultures, pp. 266-
286. Routledge, London.
Malbon B (2002) Clubbing: Dancing, ecstasy, vitality. Routledge, London.
Massey D (2005) For Space. SAGE Publications, London.
Reay D, Crozier G, Clayton J (2010) ‘Fitting In’ or ‘Standing Out’: Working‐Class Students
in UK Higher Education. British Educational Research Journal 36, 107-124.
Smith F (2004) “It's not all about grades”: accounting for gendered degree results in
geography at Brunel University. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 28, 167-178.
Smith DP, Holt L (2007) Studentification and ‘Apprentice’ Gentrifiers within Britain’s
Provincial Towns and Cities: the Meaning of Gentrification. Environment and Planning A
39, 142-161.
Smith DP, Rérat P, Sage J (2014) Youth Migration and Spaces of Education. Children's
Geographies 12, 1-8.
Swinney, P (2011) Starter for ten: five facts and five questions on the relationship between
Universities and cities economies [online]. Centre for Cities. Available from:
http://www.centreforcities.org/assets/files/2011%20Research/11-05-05%20Starter%20for
%20ten.pdf [Accessed 10 May 2011].
Taulke-Johnson R (2008) Moving Beyond Homophobia, Harassment and Intolerance: Gay
Male University Students’ Alternative Narratives. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics
of Education 29, 121-133.
Valentine G (2003) Boundary Crossings: Transitions from Childhood to
Adulthood. Children's Geographies 1, 37-52.
Villanueva K, Giles-Corti B, Bulsara M, McCormack GR, Timperio A, Middleton N, Beesley
B, Trapp G (2012) How Far do Children Travel from their Homes? Exploring Children's
Activity Spaces in their Neighborhood. Health & Place 18, 263-273.
Wattis L (2013) Class, Students and Place: Encountering Locality in a Post-Industrial
Landscape. Urban studies 50, 2425-2440.
Weber TR (1999) Raving in Toronto: Peace, Love, Unity and Respect in
Transition. Journal of Youth Studies 2, 317-336.
Wilkinson S (2015) Alcohol, Young People and Urban Life. Geography Compass, 9, 115-
126.
Worth N (2009) Understanding Youth Transition as ‘Becoming’: Identity, Time and
Futurity. Geoforum, 40, 1050-1060.
