THE SPACES OF UK STUDENTS’ UNIONS:

EXTENDING THE CRITICAL GEOGRAPHIES OF THE UNIVERSITY CAMPUS

Rachel Brooks, Kate Byford and Katherine Sela

Abstract

This article seeks to further our knowledge of the university campus by focussing on one

particular aspect of most UK campuses: the students’ union. UK students’ unions have rarely

been the subject of scholarly attention, despite them now occupying an important place

within the higher education landscape. Nevertheless, in this paper we draw on a UK-wide

study of students’ unions to explore, firstly, the role played by the buildings of the students’

union and, secondly, the ways in which aspects of the university’s campus influence union

activity. We pay particular attention to the expansion of the university campus, in many

institutions, from a single site to multiple sites, both within the UK and overseas. We contend

that a focus on the materiality of the students’ union and the level of union activity (or

inactivity) across various campus spaces can illustrate the values, ideologies and power

relations that dominate contemporary British higher education.

Introduction

UK students’ unions have come to assume an increasingly important place within the higher

education (HE) landscape. They are seen by many, including senior institutional managers, as

key actors in articulating students’ views and concerns in a market within which ‘the student

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voice’ has assumed considerable power, and are now often represented on high-level

institutional decision-making bodies. Moreover, within many higher education institutions

(HEIs), students’ unions now play a crucial role in delivery of aspects of ‘the student

experience’ – from social events, through to sports activities and ‘employability’ activities.

Their performance has also come under national scrutiny. Indeed, since 2012, the National

Student Survey (a questionnaire that final year students in all UK HEIs are asked to complete,

to record their level of ‘satisfaction’ with various aspects of their HE experience) has

included a question specifically about the performance of students’ unionsi. In many ways,

this has brought students’ unions under the same performative pressures as the wider

institutions within which they are situated (Brooks et al., 2015a).

In this paper, we explore the role of the students’ union within the contemporary higher

education system, paying particular attention to, firstly, the role played by the buildings of the

students’ union and, secondly, the ways in which aspects of the campus influence union

activity. Here, we focus specifically on the expansion of the university campus, in many

institutions, from a single site to multiple sites, both within the UK and overseas. In

developing our analysis, we contend that a focus on the materiality of the students’ union and

the level of union activity (or inactivity) across various campus sites can contribute to both

the ‘inward’ and ‘outward’ geographies of education, i.e. geographies that focus,

respectively, on the impact of space on educational processes, and the way in which

educational practices effect change of wider geographical processes (Hanson Thiem, 2009),

and also to our understanding of the ways in which particular ideologies and values become

engrained within the ‘educational spaces’ of the contemporary university.

Background

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Over the last decade, a significant body of research has been established on the geographies

of higher education. Studies, conducted across the disciplines of education and sociology, as

well as geography itself, have demonstrated effectively the ways in which experiences of

higher education are spatially differentiated and how, in many cases, this is closely related to

processes of social differentiation. In this section, we consider three themes from this body of

work, which help to contextualise some of the arguments we develop subsequently: the

materiality of university campuses; the relationship between HEIs and their local area; and

the (im)mobilities of students (both nationally and internationally).

Firstly, scholars working within the disciplines of both geography and education have argued

that the make-up of the higher education institution, in terms of both buildings and the

student population, has a significant bearing on the identities taken up by those who study

within it. Indeed, Hopkins (2010) has argued that features such as halls of residence, the

lecture theatre and the library ‘all work to enforce the identity of being a student upon young

people, separating them from those who are not a part of this institutional framework’

(p.188). Turner and Manderson (2007) provide a fascinating case study of the way in which

one campus space, the ‘coffee hall’ within the Faculty of Law at McGill University in

Canada, helps to shape student identities in a very specific way. By inviting in young lawyers

from Montreal and Toronto law firms, and offering them a specific space for repeated

socialising with students, Turner and Manderson argue that the space helps slowly to

transform the identities of those students who participate – by making prominent and giving

legitimacy to the figure of the powerful, corporate lawyer. Campuses can, however, also be

internally contested locations shaping not just social relations between students and non-

students, but between different groups of students. Indeed, extant research has highlighted the

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way in which some particular groups of students (e.g. women, Muslims, those from ‘non-

traditional’ backgrounds) can be excluded from specific campus spaces (Andersson et al.,

2012; Hopkins, 2011). Indeed, Andersson et al. (2012) argue that while the social

composition of university campuses can in some senses be seen as akin to the ‘thrown

togetherness’ of urban public space (Massey, 2005), in practice, the campus offers relatively

few opportunities for genuine cross-cultural encounter. Reay et al. (2010) have also

highlighted differences between specific campuses and institutions in the extent to which a

student identity is all-consuming. In some cases, these differences are related to the

differential status of HEIs (ibid.); however, they are also sometimes linked to institutional

location and local demographics (Franklin, 2013).

A second focus of enquiry has been the relationship between HEIs and the localities

(neighbourhoods, towns, cities and regions) within which they are situated. A particular

theme within this broad area of research is the process of ‘studentification’ (Hubbard, 2009;

Sage et al., 2012) and the various ways in which students have played a key role in

redefining, reimagining and redesigning urban spaces in particular (Smith and Holt, 2007).

The influx of students in some locations has led to residential segregation, as properties shift

from owner occupation to the private rental sector and are split into multiple occupancies

(Smith, 2005), and has also impacted on other city spaces such as clubs and pubs, as their

clientele changes (Chatterton, 1999). The turnover within student neighbourhoods is argued

to be sufficiently high to cause considerable disruption within neighbourhoods and wider

communities in many cities, while local labour markets may also be adversely affected if

students displace other young people from entry-level jobs (Munro et al., 2009). Reflecting

on such changes, Smith (2009) contends that ‘challenging issues such as socio-spatial

segregation, marginalisation, polarisation, exclusion, fragmentation, conflict and resistance

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increasingly come to the fore’ (p.1802) – as result, student geographies are increasingly

politicised and contested.

Relationships with the locality do not, however, hinge solely on the actions of students with

respect to housing and labour market participation. Indeed, Cochrane and Williams (2013)

argue that local relationships have become increasingly salient for all higher education

institutions, in the UK at least, and strong mutual dependencies have emerged. They write:

‘Even where a university is largely seen as (and defines itself as) a national or international

player rather than a local player…not only can its decisions have a dramatic local impact but

also its ability to perform as a national or international player may equally depend on its

ability to operate effectively as a local player’ (p.54). It helps to shape, and is also shaped by,

the local region – through, for example, the frequent meetings between senior politicians and

officers and their university counterparts in a range of contexts and events (ibid.). Strong ties

to local contexts have been documented well in other national contexts. In their research on

Monash University’s branch campus in Malaysia, for example, Sidhu and Christie (2014)

argue that this venture was tied closely to the ‘hypermodern remodelling of the urban-

regional landscape of greater Kuala Lumpar’ (p.193) and an attempt to consolidate the city’s

reputation as an aspiring global city.

Finally, a third strand of research on the geographies of higher education has focussed on the

(im)mobilities of students. Scholars have, for example, pointed to the different ‘circuits’ of

institutions prospective students choose within, with those from more privileged backgrounds

tending to choose within national, or even international HE markets, while their counterparts

from less privileged backgrounds often make their own choices within more limited regional

or local markets (Brooks and Waters, 2009; Reay et al., 2005). Moreover, research has helped

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to establish that, while moving away from the parental home for university is often accorded

greater cultural value than pursuing a degree locally (Holdsworth, 2006), living at home can

help to minimise the ‘identity risks’ for working class students associated with studying

within a predominantly middle class institution (Clayton et al., 2009; Patiniotis and

Holdsworth, 2005). It has also shown how spatial mobility is mediated by regional cultures,

with Scotland, for example, having a strongly embedded culture of students attending their

local higher education institution (Christie, 2007), and many Welsh students choosing to

remain within Wales for HE as a means of reaffirming their national identity (Hinton, 2011).

Students who choose to remain ‘local’ may struggle to reconcile their student and non-

student identities (Holdsworth, 2006) but, as Abrahams and Ingram (2013) have argued, can

sometimes derive considerable benefit from their positioning between two somewhat

contradictory fields – occupying a ‘third space’ between that of local residents and HE

students (see also Holton, 2014).

With respect to international student mobility, while many studies have indicated that more

privileged social groups are much more likely than other social groups to be able to overcome

the ‘friction of distance’ (Brooks and Waters, 2009; King et al., 2011), this is not always

played out in a straightforward manner. Indeed, Deakin (2014) has shown how the difficulty

of finding a placement domestically (during a degree course at a UK HEI) motivated many of

her respondents to seek such placements abroad. Similarly, Collins (2014) has argued that

international mobility on the part of higher education graduates (in the case of his

respondents, to South Korea) was often motivated by a perceived failure at home –

particularly an inability to secure stable, well-paid employment on completion of their

degree. Research on internationally-mobile students has also emphasised the importance of

the material spaces of the university campus. Fincher and Shaw (2009), for example, have

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shown how international students in Melbourne, Australia were (unintentionally) segregated

from their domestic counterparts through the institutional practices of universities – including

the provision of separate, high-rise housing for international students.

Implicit, and sometimes, explicit in these three strands of research is the idea that the ‘spaces

of higher education’ (broadly conceived) are engrained with particular values. They are thus

not neutral spaces, but ones in which particular relations of power and/or ideologies are

played out. Such arguments have been made, in the geography of education more generally,

by scholars who have focussed on the materiality of education (e.g. Burke, 2005; Jewitt and

Jones, 2005) and also on educational mobilities (e.g. Waters, 2006). In the remainder of this

article we contribute to this work by arguing that both the buildings of the students’ union

and the broader campus(es) within which they are located are engrained with the values,

ideologies and power relations that dominate contemporary British higher education.

Research methods

In this article we draw upon data collected as part of a project that explored the changing

nature of student leadership in the UK (Brooks et al., 2015a). Although the broader project

included an online survey, this paper focusses primarily on the data collected from 20 focus

groups in ten HEIs and, to a lesser extent, on four focus groups with specific role-holders

within students’ unions (e.g. presidents, education officers) drawn from a national sample.

The ten HEIs were chosen to represent the diversity of the HE sector and comprised: three

HEIs in the Russell Groupii; two HEIs established in the 1960s, that are not part of the Russell

Group; four newer institutions that gained university status after 1992; and one specialist HEI

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that offers a relatively limited range of courses. Responses to the online survey were also

used to choose the sample – again, our aim was to capture some of the diversity of the sector,

by choosing institutions that had different patterns of response to the survey. Further

characteristics of the sample (presented so as not to compromise the anonymity of the

institutions) are given in Table 1. Although geographical location was not a primary

consideration in our choice of case study institutions, as Table 1 demonstrates, our achieved

sample included institutions in both urban and more rural areas, and in different parts of the

UK (all were, however, located in England).

In each institution, two focus groups were conducted: one with students’ union officers

(typically comprising four to six individuals), and a second with senior managers (typically

comprising four individuals). Individuals were recruited into the groups in the following

ways: for the students’ union focus group, the president was contacted and asked if he or she

would be prepared to take part in the research and, if so, to ask key members of his/her

leadership team to take part. Typically, the students’ union focus group comprised the

sabbatical officers in the institution and, where available, the union’s chief executive or

general manager (i.e. one person who was on a permanent contract rather than in a sabbatical

position). With respect to the institutional managers, we first contacted the vice-chancellor,

who then typically put us in contact with another senior manager. He/she then recruited other

senior managers to join the focus group. We asked that, where possible, these individuals

should, between them, have responsibility for the following areas: student welfare, learning

and teaching, finance, and registry functions. In most cases, the achieved sample reflected

these areas. The main gatekeepers (e.g. the union president, and the senior manager who

recruited other participants) took responsibility for deciding on the location of the focus

groups. The students’ union focus groups were typically held within students’ union

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buildings, and the senior managers’ focus groups in institutional meeting rooms. In all cases,

the rooms were private, and participants were able to speak freely without concerns about

being overheard. In total, 88 people took part in one of the 20 focus groups: 42 senior

managers and 46 students’ union officers.

We also draw, to a lesser extent, on the role-specific focus groups we conducted. We

conducted four such groups – one with presidents, one with education officers, another with

welfare officers and a final group with those responsible for sports and/or activities. These

groups were conducted during national training events for sabbatical officers, run by the

National Union of Students, and participants were recruited through a general call during the

training event. Participants were thus drawn from across the UK, and represented a wider

range of institutions than those involved in the institutional case studies discussed above. In

total, 37 people took part in one of the four groups.

With the agreement of participants, the focus groups were audio-recorded and fully

transcribed, and the transcriptions uploaded to NVivo, a software package for qualitative data

analysis. The transcripts were then analysed, and themes identified. Although we did not set

out to explore the ways in which space was used within the higher education institutions, nor

the impact spatial issues had on the work of the students’ unions, both became important

themes (or interesting absences) in many of the focus group discussions, and thus constituted

key aspects of our subsequent analysis. When we quote from the focus groups in the

discussion below, we do not identify any individual participants, only whether they were a

member of the students’ union focus group, the (institutional) senior managers’ focus group,

or one of the role-specific focus groups (e.g. presidents’ focus group). For the institutional

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case study focus groups, we note which HEI the group came from (using numbers to preserve

anonymity).

The students’ union building

In the literature on higher education, there is an increasing emphasis on the importance of

virtual spaces in terms of both pedagogic practice (Edwards, 2012) and wider aspects of

university life, such as social relationships between students (Collins, 2012). It has also been

argued that online spaces, and social media in particular, are playing a key role in facilitating

the political engagement of students. For example, in his analysis of the 2010 student

occupations of university campuses in the UK, Theocharis (2012) argues that the internet

increased the effectiveness of student action, enabled their aims to become more widely and

quickly known, and garnered moral support from a diverse range of social actors, enabling

wider networks to be forged. In our study, however, much greater emphasis was placed by

respondents upon the physical spaces of the HEI campus than on the virtual spaces available

to students and/or students’ union officials. Indeed, the students’ union building itself was

discussed, at great length, by many of those who participated in the focus groups – and by

both senior managers and those involved in students’ unions. Several respondents described

how changes had recently been made to the buildings used by the students’ union, which,

they claimed, had had a positive effect. For senior managers at HEI 7, for example, a shift to

a more central location on campus was thought to have had a significant influence on the

visibility of the union, and the propensity of others to engage with it:

It’s much more visible, the [students’ union] is just a much more open place, it’s more

centrally located, it’s better connected with other parts of the university. It’s actually a

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place where people are wanting, not just the students, but people want to do things in

it. And I think, so it’s more valued by the university than the temporary place that was

there before. And I suppose that, the effect on the student unions it’s just to make its

business, its existence much more public…..I think that’s made a big difference

because the student union is far more visible, not just for students, but it’s also visible

for staff as well.

Similarly, union officials at HEI 9 claimed that the improvement in the union’s space –

making it more open and welcoming – had had a direct impact on its use:

We have had this fantastic space this year, so we have been able to even engage with

people that don’t have problems, all they want to do is to find a nice place to sit … To

chill out, yeah. … and to play Scrabble and to …. You know the glass front, when

you first walked in, that used to be a brick wall with a little window, could knock on

and speak to someone in reception in the corridor. So it wasn’t even nice sort of …It

was awful.

A small minority of respondents spoke about the neglect of their students’ union building, but

again made the same connection between the physical infrastructure and the degree of

engagement and usage by the wider student body:

Coming back to the kind of notion of student union as a social hub for students, I

mean they just, we just don’t do it here. And that sounds like being critical, but it’s a

fact of life, we don’t do it and the reasons are manifest! I mean the building in which

they’ve historically been housed is dreadful, in terms of kind of doing anything, not

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least doing anything to it to make it a kind of fit for purpose building, is going to be

phenomenally expensive, etc, etc, and clearly it’s something the university is looking

at. (Senior managers, HEI 3)

In these accounts, an emphasis on the materiality of the campus is clearly evident. In

particular, the nature and location of the students’ union building is claimed to have a direct

impact on the extent to which the wider student body engages (or does not engage) with the

union. As Hopkins (2011) has contended, the internal places and structures that operate in

university contexts are ‘important factors in determining how university campuses are

experienced in empowering or exclusionary ways’ (p.158). They also resonate with the

claims of scholars who have argued that the material spaces of the university often play an

overtly political role. Crossley and Ibrahim (2012), for example, have maintained that

students’ unions help to facilitate the political engagement of young adults (and other

students) by serving as a network that brings together like-minded individuals, and providing

a mechanism for resource mobilisation – by offering campaigners rooms in which they can

meet and access to telephones, the internet and print technologies (Crossley, 2008).

Moreover, Rheingans and Hollands (2012) have argued that the occupation of physical space

on university campuses was a key aspect of the 2010 student protests in the UK; this, they

contend, problematises claims that youth politics are increasingly played out through virtual

spaces. Indeed, they maintain that the idea of ‘reclaiming’ physical space on campus was

articulated clearly by student protesters, and allowed them ‘to imagine that a different kind of

educational experience was possible, with student[s] organising alternative meetings, lectures

and discussions in occupied space’ (p.14).

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Although, as we have already noted, there is currently very little academic research on the

role of students’ unions in the UK, a notable exception is that carried by Andersson and

colleagues (2012), which analysed the role of the union as part of a broader project that

examined ‘geographies of encounter’ between different social groups at a UK HEI. They

argue that while, in theory, the students’ union can be seen as a key arena for bringing

students from different backgrounds together to pursue a range of social, political and leisure

activities, in practice, the increasingly commodified nature of union activity militates against

social mixing. Here, they point to the impact of unions letting out space to private enterprises,

which then often offer a range of highly-gendered commercial activities (such as beauty

salons, hairdressers and nightclubs). Thus, ‘while the “official” rhetoric of the university

supports values of gender equality…the actual experience of the commodified campus can

blatantly contradict this ethos’ (p.505). Similarly, Andersson et al. maintain that while

religion is often debated explicitly within many union-run student societies, religion occupies

a marginal place in the institution as a whole because of the way in which many union-run

leisure spaces tend to promote hedonistic cultures associated with sex and drinking (see also

Hopkins, 2011). The students’ union, in their analysis, is thus a space in which students from

diverse backgrounds are indeed ‘thrown together’ but which does not take the shape of a

Habermasian, egalitarian ‘public sphere’; instead it is a space that is heavily mediated by

commercial interests, and tends to reinforce some forms of inequality.

Our data, however, suggest a more complex reading of the spaces of students’ union, and a

more ambivalent relationship between unions and processes of commodification. Although

commercial activities on campus were clearly important to senior managers and, as we have

argued elsewhere (Brooks et al., 2015b), were valued by some students’ unions as means of

preserving some independence (through having an income stream in addition to the block

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grant from their institution), in none of our ten case studies were they viewed (either by

managers or union officers) as the key focus of the union’s activity. While we would agree

with Andersson et al. (2012) that market pressures have had a very significant impact on the

function of students’ unions within the UK higher education system, we suggest that these

pressures have caused unions to place less emphasis, rather than more, on their commercial

activities, which, in turn, has implications for the physical spaces that students’ unions

occupy. This can be explained largely with reference to the type of market pressures that have

come to bear. While HEIs are clearly concerned with revenue generation and ensuring

financial sustainability in an increasingly competitive higher education market, the

importance of measures of ‘student satisfaction’ in stimulating demand for courses has

encouraged senior managers to work closely with their students’ union and, often, to value

highly the contributions unions can make to improving the quality of ‘the student experience’

and ensuring ‘the student voice’ is represented effectively (although see Sabri (2011) for an

insightful deconstruction of these terms). As noted previously, the inclusion of a question

about the performance of the students’ union within the National Student Survey has been a

particularly effective mechanism for aligning the priorities of both union officers and

institutional leaders, through subjecting them to the same (public and rank-able) measures of

performance (Brooks et al., 2015a).

Such pressures have encouraged unions to foreground their representative function, often at

the expense of campaigning activities and also, in many cases, to the detriment of commercial

ventures. The senior managers at HEI 9 described how: ‘there was probably a watershed

moment…when the student union moved away from its commercial operations… and ceased

operating bars and retail shops on campuses…so that has really released the officers to rather

than being entertainment officers, which had always been a sort of very preoccupying focus,

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to being student representatives again.’ This has, inevitably, had a direct impact on the use of

physical space on campus, with a decline in the number of bars and clubs. The same

pressures have also been an important driver of institutional investment in the physical

infrastructure of students’ unions - particularly a desire to increase the visibility and use of

the union by the wider student body, so that there is greater appreciation of its role at the time

of NSS completion.

I was just going to say that they invest in us because our views aligned. I mean last

year they spent up to £1 million upgrading all of our, you know, the sites we’ve got

for our students. And that’s because they recognised obviously you know that shared

vision, you know of improving the student experience and offering services to

students. And they see the service they get through the student voice. So I think that

just demonstrates you know what they, that alignment to a degree… I think that’s a

demonstration of a reward because of what we’ve got in common. (Students’ union

focus group, HEI 9)

As is articulated explicitly in this quotation, union officers believed they had been ‘rewarded’

by investment in their buildings for their support of university priorities. In some cases,

respondents also linked this type of investment to the substantial increase in tuition fees for

domestic students in England and Wales from 2012 onwards:

And my view is that the university’s very much aware of the fact that the fees have

gone up to £9,000, certainly at the start of this academic session, and they’re very

keen to invest in facilities for students and provide additional resource to support the

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student experience, and [the union is] very good at actually tailoring their message to

sort of like address that particular lead. (Senior managers’ focus group, HEI 4)

Here again, we see congruence in values (or at least in ‘the message’) being rewarded with

investment in physical infrastructure.

As a number of the quotations provided earlier suggest, investment in better buildings and

other facilities for students’ unions was thought to have increased usage and brought a wider

range of students into the union building(s). Thus, there is perhaps now – in some institutions

at least – a greater potential for ‘cross-cultural encounter’. Nevertheless, our data also

indicate that while institutional investment in students’ unions buildings may have had a

positive impact on both the use and visibility of union space, it was not always entirely

unproblematic. Indeed, some of the factors that had motivated the investment were also those

that created tensions. For example, students’ union officers at HEI 6 described a struggle over

the extent to which the union should look similar to the rest of the university and an

insistence by senior management that they should use the same colour schemes and branding.

They concluded by arguing that ‘they take it too far and they want us to basically just be a

university department they can control…almost as a propaganda machine!’. Similarly, at HEI

2, union officers described how an institutional concern about the appearance of the campus

made it more difficult for them to advertise their activities and services: ‘the [HEI] is very

branded…and there aren’t many places for us to actually put up what we’re doing, either

posters or like we’ve got these great plasma screens around but the SU [students’ union] isn’t

allowed to promote their events on there for some reason’. In both these cases, the students’

union was perceived as very important to the wider institution, and worthy of investment in

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the physical infrastructure, but primarily as a means of achieving the HEI’s own goals; thus,

its objectives were prioritised over those of the union.

Such tensions provide support for those who have argued that university campuses are often

‘paradoxical spaces’ in which competing, and sometimes contradictory, discourses prevail

(Andersson et al., 2012; Hopkins, 2011). They also illustrate how educational institutions are

not simply conduits of neo-liberal forms of governance but help to shape and, in some cases,

modify, pressures towards commodification (Brooks et al, 2015b). As we have argued above,

and in contrast to the position taken by Andersson and colleagues (2012), our research

indicates that the spaces of students’ unions have not become highly commodified and

handed over to private enterprise. Instead, over recent years, there has been a subtle shift,

away from a focus on commercial services, towards the foregrounding of the representative

function of students’ unions. Nevertheless, this has been driven, we would suggest, by

broadly neo-liberal imperatives – namely the desire to perform well in an increasingly

competitive higher education market, in which union officers have come to play an important

role in articulating students’ concerns, and in which unions themselves have become subject

to some of the same measures of performance as their HEI. While, in many cases, this has

had the effect of more closely aligning the goals of unions and institutions – which had often

resulted in an increased emphasis on the visibility and quality of students’ union buildings –

tensions occurred when objectives diverged and union activity was not perceived as

benefitting the institution as a whole. In general, however, our data provide evidence of the

new power relations in higher education, i.e. the performative pressures that apply in similar

ways to students’ unions and HEIs in general, and, in some institutions, the increasing ‘use’

of unions to further management agendas. Thus, in common with previous studies on the

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materiality of education (Burke, 2005; Jewitt and Jones, 2005), we see how particular values

become engrained in buildings and other physical spaces.

The campus(es)

Alongside the buildings of the students’ union, the wider HEI campus was also significant in

relation to the work of the union in many of our case study institutions. This was discussed by

our respondents in three main ways: firstly, in relation to the specific geography of the

institution; secondly, with respect to whether or not it was spread over more than one

campus; and, finally, in relation to its overseas activity.

Location of the campus

The physical location of the campus has a strong bearing on the role of the students’ union

and those who become involved in it. For example, those HEIs that were based in inner city

locations tended to report greater involvement of international students in the union than

HEIs in less urban locations. Indeed, although many HEIs described the difficulty they had

had in engaging international students in the students’ union, the senior managers’ focus

group at HEI 7 noted that ‘an interesting feature of our [students’ union] sabbatical team for

the last four, five years, well I think every student union president for the last five years has

been an international student….I think that probably says something about the fact that

they’re here more on campus than anything else!’. This was explained largely with reference

to the inner city location of the campus: ‘home’ students typically commuted to the HEI from

some distance away, while international students more commonly lived in university

accommodation, located close to the institution, and were thus physically present on campus

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for longer periods of time. Similarly, at another inner city HEI in our sample, HEI 2, the

absence of halls of residence for any student was thought by union officers to have had a

significant (negative) impact on knowledge of and participation within the students’ union.

At this institution, students typically lived with others on their particular course in private

rented accommodation and thus, it was believed, there were fewer opportunities for

‘spreading the word’ about the students’ union: ‘if none of your friends are in the SU, you’ve

never talked about the SU, you’re not, I don’t think you’re as likely to engage with it’

(Students’ union focus group, HEI 2). In their analysis of the role of students’ union in the

politicisation of young people, Crossley and Ibrahim (2012) argue that the social networks,

facilitated by the union are key – for bringing like-minded individuals together, and providing

the structures for politically-active students to intersect a variety of social circles, and thus

recruit others to political causes. Our data suggest that there is likely to be significant spatial

variation in such processes and that, in inner city environments in particular, where students

do not experience such social mixing through halls of residence (because none exist) or well-

attended campus events (because many students leave campus to commute home as soon as

their classes are over), the impact of the students’ union is likely to be reduced.

Commuting students are not, however, only to be found at inner city institutions. Indeed, the

now sizable literature on ‘local’ students (i.e. those who do not move away from their home

to attend university) has demonstrated that an increasing number of students are choosing to

commute for financial reasons, to maintain particular emotional and intimate links and, for

some working class students, as an effective means of controlling the social risks of attending

middle class institutions (Abrahams and Ingram, 2013; Christie, 2007; Clayton et al., 2009).

Here, we see a strong relationship between the status of an HEI and its ‘catchment area’, with

low status institutions typically recruiting from local markets, high status institutions from

19

across the UK, and Oxbridge and some London HEIs from predominantly international

markets (Brooks and Waters, 2009; Reay et al., 2005). The social composition of HEIs is

equally differentiated, with more privileged students more likely to be able to overcome the

‘friction of distance’ (Harvey, 1989) than their less privileged peers. The institutions with

larger catchment areas (i.e. those that are higher status) are likely to have a larger proportion

of students living close by (in halls or shared student houses) than those (lower status

institutions) that have a greater proportion of commuting students, which, as suggested by the

data above, is likely to affect participation in the students’ union. Moreover, as previous

research has shown, there are also differences by HEI status in the extent to which ‘being a

student’ comprises the main part of one’s identity. Indeed, on the basis of their work at four

different HEIs, Reay et al. (2010) argue that ‘the rewards and recognition of being a

university student are powerfully differentiated across the higher education field’ (p.120) (see

also Brooks, 2013). Such differences have a direct impact on the time students have available

to become involved in their students’ union. Our respondents articulated this clearly in

relation to students with childcare commitments, and also those who had to engage in a

substantial amount of paid work to support themselves through university:

…like during my time at university, I have to work part time quite a lot, so I couldn’t

get involved with societies and make like big meetings or run for executive committee

positions because I just didn’t have the time in the week. And I think that’s where the

kind of class thing is a barrier….you’re just at a disadvantage against people who

didn’t have to work during their studies, didn’t have to work that much. (Presidents’

focus group)

20

The physical presence (or absence) on campus of particular groups of students was also

believed to have a direct impact on the activities pursued by the students’ union, and the

nature of the ‘student voice’ that was articulated. Indeed, the senior managers at HEI 9

commented that ‘there is always the danger that student union officers, either as individuals

or a collective, get hijacked by a particular issue, from a particularly small group of students,

that is not actually representative of the wider student body, it’s just because those people are

in the student union officers’ faces’ (italics added for emphasis). Here, the importance of

physical proximity is clearly evident.

Giroux (2011) has argued that, within the US context, the necessity to engage in paid work to

support one’s studies has adversely affected students’ interest and willingness to become

involved in political protest on campus. Our data suggest that similar arguments apply

equally to more mundane forms of union activity, but are also socially differentiated: not all

students have the same physical and emotional relationship to their campus, and social

inclusion is manifestly more easily achieved for some social groups than others. An HEI’s

location within the institutional hierarchy has a clear impact on the physical location of

students with respect to the campus which, in turn, has a direct influence on their propensity

to become involved in the students’ union.

Multiple UK campuses

Four of the ten case study institutions had more than one campus location in the UK and, at

the time of the research, a fifth institution was in the process of establishing a second campus.

In the four HEIs that already had multiple campuses, respondents spoke of some of the

difficulties the students’ union had experienced operating across the various sites. At HEI 4,

21

this was articulated in relation to the very different scores the students’ union had received in

the National Student Survey from students at its constituent campuses:

… and we said, if you take that headline figure, but now break it down by campus,

what you will [see] is there’s quite a big difference, that actually that score is hiding a

sort of very high satisfaction at [original campus] and the facilities and a lower

satisfaction with the new campus …. So in fact there was a real issue, I think, if you

looked at the two campuses, there was quite a difference in satisfaction with the

union’s services on the two campuses. (Senior managers’ focus group, HEI 4)

Similar responses emerged from the other HEIs: the union was perceived to be less effective

in the ‘satellite’ or newer campuses than in the main and/or original campus. In large part,

this was attributed to differences in the physical presence of the union and its officers. Senior

managers at HEI 4, for example, believed that the discrepancies revealed by the NSS could

be explained largely by the different amount of union-run space at the two campuses.

Moreover, where union effectiveness was deemed to have improved, this was felt to be

because of an increased physical presence:

we also then opened a new campus out at [location] and I would say in the last two

years, the student union have been much more proactive in putting a permanent base

out at the [location] campus to support the students out there. (Senior managers’ focus

group, HEI 1)

Thus, as suggested previously, the materiality and physical presence of the students’ unions

appeared to be important to both staff and students. Moreover, just as Hopkins (2011) has

22

argued for greater sensitivity to the different geographical locations of university campuses,

so we would contend that attention also has to be paid to spatial variation within a single

university; as institutions expand their operations, open new campuses and cover new

geographical areas, we cannot assume that social processes will be played out in identical

ways across all institutional spaces. This point is underlined when we consider that multiple

campuses within the same HEI may vary socially as well as geographically. Indeed,

respondents from several of the HEIs with more than one UK campus identified differences

in the student populations at their different sites.

One of the things I suppose I would like to highlight there is we’ve got another

campus where our nurses study, which is in [location], and since the campus[es] were

consolidated a few years ago, we’ve had a real problem with spreading our message

over at [newer campus] and actually getting a positive sort of reinforcement of what

we’re doing and making sure that we’re representing that demographic of students in

the right way. (Students’ union focus group, HEI 1)

Technically, I mean it depends how far you want to take it, but all those students are

[HEI 4] students, they’re all studying [HEI 4] approved courses, we are technically

responsible for all those students (agreement) but we have limited effect … the less

students there are at a place, the less effect you will have, the less weight we’re given.

We are less effective on the whole at our [newer] campus because we’re not [newer

campus] students and it makes it more difficult to know their experience and to know

the problems, it’s a much steeper learning curve. (Students’ union focus group, HEI 4)

23

In the first of the quotations above, the students at the newer campus are differentiated in

relation to their course of study. In the second quotation, however, it is the physical location

of the campus itself which is used to differentiate the students. Here, clear lines are drawn

between the experiences of students at the main campus and those of students at the newer

site, and the respondents imply that this physical separation makes it harder for proper

representation to occur. Nevertheless, it is also important to recognise the way in which social

and physical factors are entangled. The newer campus at HEI 4 offers a range of more

applied courses than are available at the main campus and very few postgraduate courses, and

its average entry requirements are significantly lower. It thus attracts a different (and less

‘traditional’) student body from that at the main campus. Thus, the comment ‘we’re not

[newer campus] students’ above seems not merely a recognition of physical separation but

also a recognition of social distance and, perhaps, a means of social distancing. As Andersson

et al. (2012) have argued, the positions of those who can be seen as university ‘insiders’ (i.e.

white, middle class students, with a family history of HE), are frequently secured by

positioning others as ‘outsiders’, and so enabling ‘the avoidance of engagement with those

experiences and narratives of those whose testimonies might disrupt the notion of the

inclusive campus’ (p.512).

Overseas campuses

While multiple campuses in the UK were discussed at length by a number of the focus

groups, and mentioned by both senior managers and students’ union officials, discussion of

overseas campuses was much more limited – despite three of the case study institutions

having significant activity in this area. At HEI 4, its overseas campuses were not discussed at

all, while at HEI 8 and HEI 5, overseas activity was mentioned only by the senior managers’

24

focus group – and not at all by officers from the students’ unions. This suggests that overseas

campuses were relatively unimportant in terms of the unions’ understandings of their own

function, despite what appeared to be a clear desire, on the part of senior management, for

them to extend their role outside the UK:

I think that’s an area where I think they’re looking how they can … And I think the

university’s quite keen that they, there’s a bit more joined up thinking between [overseas

campuses] and [HEI 8] in relation to the student union. We’d like to see the student union

help us with the development of student experience, of student representation of the

campuses. They have a different set of legal, you know, and charity requirements though,

that obviously means that their priority is the UK. (Senior managers’ focus group, HEI 8)

At HEI 5, the students’ union was already involved with its overseas campuses, but in a very

limited range of roles, primarily in student support: ‘Our student union staff are involved in

sort of, you know, student cases in our partner institutions … you know, supporting students

in [overseas campuses] and appeals as well as at [HEI 5]’ (Senior managers’ focus group,

HEI 5). It is also notable that only union staff were involved in the activity in overseas

campuses, rather than elected officers. To some extent, the limited role of students’ unions in

overseas campuses can be explained by the legal restrictions imposed upon unions by their

charitable status, which encourages a UK focusiii. Here, there is strong resonance with other

studies on international higher education, which have pointed to the way in which university

policies and procedures do not travel easily across national borders. Altbach and Knight

(2007), for example, have argued that while most universities have adequate quality

assurance processes in place to cover the domestic delivery of their programmes, in many

cases ‘these do not cover the challenges inherent in working cross-culturally, in a foreign

25

regulatory environment’ (p.302). There is also a conspicuous lack of international policy co-

operation in this area, which can often disadvantage the students who take up forms of

international or transnational education (Deumert et al., 2005). The exclusion of students at

the overseas campuses of these HEIs from membership of the students’ union and thus,

presumably, from adequate representation of their concerns and desires, reinforces

inequalities between students attending the same HEI but in different parts of the world.

Moreover, as Brown and Tannock (2009) have argued, as both education policy and demands

for social justice tend to be framed at the national rather than the international level, the rights

of students studying at overseas campuses of UK HEIs (or indeed international students

studying within the UK) tend to be overlooked. Tannock (2013) maintains that this is a

problem with policymaking, but also with scholarly enquiry. Indeed, he contends that within

recent academic literature there is ‘little, if any, discussion of how the ideal of educational

equality should be operationalised at the international level – an issue which is at the heart of

many national-level discussions of education, practice, policy and justice’ (p.449).

Such arguments also articulate with wider concerns about the ‘politics of responsibility’ and

how this does (or does not) travel across national borders as part of transnational processes.

Massey (2004) has argued that responsibility for others has tended to focus on those who are

geographically local as a result of an emphasis on ‘the exclusive meaningfulness of the local’

and the wariness of meta-narratives, brought about by post-structuralism and post-

colonialism. She goes on to argue that, instead, responsibility ‘derives from those relations

through which identity is constructed’ (p.10). In this way, responsibility is: relational and

depends on a relationship with others; not restricted to the immediate or very local; and

cognisant of the ‘power geometries’ which structure the relationship. A more political and

less individualised concept of responsibility is thus advocated. In applying this argument to

26

international education, Madge and colleagues (2009) have traced the ‘post-colonial legacies’

that continue to inform international education, but have also outlined the cornerstones of

what they call an ‘engaged pedagogy’. Such a pedagogy, they suggest, foregrounds genuine

dialogue between students of all backgrounds, contests hegemonic discourses of Western

‘best practice’ and, echoing Massey, ‘take[s] responsibility to care and to imagine everyday

academic practices from a multitude of different perspectives and centres’ (p. 43). The ways

in which the senior managers in our research discussed the overseas campuses of their HEIs,

and the absence of any discussion of these campuses in the narratives of the students’ union

officers, suggests strongly that, for our respondents at least, ‘the university’ was seen in

rather limited geographical terms, often with an exclusive focus on the UK site. Overseas

campuses were, at best, seen as marginal to the main focus of the students’ union (and, by

extension, perhaps the wider institution, too). The apparent lack of concern about ensuring

full representation of the students at overseas campuses within the union, or indeed ensuring

that the union’s services were rolled out to overseas sites, suggests that the ‘politics of

responsibility’ is not being extended in the way advocated by Massey (2004) and Madge et

al. (2009). This lack of concern may be explained by the neo-colonial influences referred to

above. However, it also has clear links to the national political imperatives discussed earlier

in this paper. The increasing importance of the students’ union, within the UK, in terms of

delivering ‘the student experience’ (i.e. the non-academic parts of university life) and in

ensuring a good result in the National Student Survey (not least because of the specific

question that focuses on the performance of the students’ union), has – as we argued above –

brought the union and its officers into the clear purview of senior managers, and significant

support and investment (for example, in the physical infrastructure) has been offered to

ensure that unions perform as effectively as possible. Because of the way in which the UK

higher education market is structured, there are clear returns to the institution to investing in

27

the union. Such political incentives do not operate in such a direct way overseas. Students at

the overseas campuses of UK HEIs do not complete the National Student Survey, and are

engaging with a very different educational market from that in the UK. Thus, the economic

motives for paying such close attention to the operation of the students’ union overseas, as

has been evident in the UK over recent years, are absent. International activity was thus seen

as not within the remit of the students’ union, as senior managers at HEI 8 articulated clearly:

‘I guess there’s two areas of, I wouldn’t quite call it divergence but where there’s particular

elements of the university would probably have less resonance with the student union, that’s

obviously our research agenda and also our international agenda, you know, particularly in

relation to the international campuses’. Certainly, from our data, there was no evidence of

union officers feeling a ‘sense of place’ (Agnew, 1987) in relation to the overseas campuses.

The analysis above, which has focussed on the relationship between students’ unions and

campuses, provides further evidence of the way in which power and ideology are played out

through the physical spaces of higher education institutions. While the first part of the paper

suggested that particular values were engrained in buildings (those of the students’ union),

this part has shown how the values of a hierarchical higher education system, which requires

a significant financial commitment from students, influence the physical location of students

with respect to their institution (e.g. whether they attend a ‘local’ HEI or one further afield,

where they live during their course of study, which campus they attend) and thus their

propensity to become involved in their union. Similarly, the dominant ideology which sees

the expansion of HEIs overseas as primarily an economically-driven activity, with little

attention to the ‘politics of responsibility’, is evidenced through the ways in which overseas

campuses are viewed as, at best, peripheral to the activities of the students’ union.

28

Conclusion

Hanson Thiem (2009) has usefully distinguished between what she calls an ‘inward-looking’

geography of education and an ‘outward-looking’ version. While the former refers to

focussing on the difference space makes to education, the latter foregrounds the ways in

which education ‘makes space’ and/or contributes to wider geographical processes. It has

been our intention in this paper to explore both. In relation to the former, we would agree

with Gulson and Symes (2007) that ‘the failure to entertain, in any full-blooded way, the

spatial dynamics and exigencies underpinning education means that an understanding of

education’s context, policy and practice will, at best, be a narrow one and perhaps, at worst, a

flawed one’ (p.13). Thus, we have shown how the physical spaces of the students’ union are

believed to have a significant impact on student engagement, and how the geographical

location of the HEI has an important bearing on the proportion – and social characteristics –

of students who become involved with the union. Our evidence, that not all students are able

to make equal use of students’ union services as a result of their geographical location (on a

satellite campus, or overseas campus, or because of the travelling time required to commute

to the campus, for example), helps to identify some of the ‘exclusionary spaces’ within UK

higher education campuses. In doing so, it highlights the close relationship between spatial

differentiation and social differentiation. Moreover, our data have emphasised the importance

of recognising diversity both between HEIs campuses and within them. Indeed, the data

reveal significant differences in the workings of the students’ unions across multiple campus

sites (in the UK and/or overseas) within individual institutions.

It is also the case that a focus on the spaces of students’ unions has allowed us to engage with

the ‘outward-looking’ geographies of education. We have argued above that the stark

29

differences between the level of union involvement in UK campuses and overseas campuses

feeds into wider debates about the ‘politics of responsibility’ and the difficulties of making

demands for equality of treatment, and social justice more generally, when the provision of

services moves outside the confines of the nation-state. Moreover, we have also shown how

educational spaces affect the ways in which processes of marketisation and commodification

are played out. In contrast to the arguments made by Andersson et al. (2012), we have

contended that in the spaces of the contemporary students’ union, the particular pressures of

the UK higher education market have caused unions to move away from profit-making

activities and, instead, to focus heavily on representation. This has been associated with a

greater alignment of values between senior management and union officials, and an

investment in the physical infrastructure of the union. While these data do not suggest that

such educational processes are helping to challenge or avert neoliberal forms of governance

(Chatterton and Pickerell, 2010), they do demonstrate that educational spaces mediate the

nature of these forms of governance. In developing this analysis, we have suggested that the

relationship between students’ unions and campuses, provides further evidence of the way in

which power and ideology are played out through the physical spaces of higher education

institutions. The values of the hierarchical, stratified and performative British higher

education system are engrained in the buildings of the students’ union. Moreover, they

influence the physical location of students with respect to their institution and thus their

likelihood of becoming involved in their union. Similarly, the dominant ideology which sees

the expansion of HEIs overseas as primarily an economically-driven activity, with little

attention to the ‘politics of responsibility’, is evidenced through the ways in which overseas

campuses are viewed as, at best, peripheral to the activities of the students’ union.

30

Our data also reveal the ‘active dynamics of space’ (Cook and Hemming, 2011, p.4). The

development of multiple HEI sites, and the foregrounding of the representative function of

students’ unions, are both relatively recent phenomena, linked to wider developments in the

marketisation and internationalisation of higher education, as well as specific policy

imperatives in the UK. As we have suggested above, both these developments have had an

impact on the use of campus space, and the extent to which different groups of students are

able to access the spaces of the students’ union. As Cresswell (2004) has argued, place needs

to be understood as an ongoing and embodied relationship with the world: ‘places are

constructed by people doing things and in this sense are never “finished” but are constantly

being performed’ (p.37). To draw on Massey (2009), the spaces occupied by students’ unions

are not surfaces on which temporal processes take place, but a product of social relations and

practices which are themselves subject to change. Thus, while research on students’ unions is

important for generating new knowledge about these particular actors within the higher

education field, perhaps its greater significance is in its contribution to the wider area of

critical geographies of education – showing how a spatial focus can lead to better

understandings of the university campus, and to articulating more clearly the relationship

between education and processes of marketisation, commodification and internationalisation.

Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to: all those who gave up their time to take part in this research; Johanna

Waters for help in thinking through the ‘politics of responsibility’; and the three anonymous

referees who provided very helpful feedback on the original version of this paper. We would

also like to thank the National Union of Students and the Leadership Foundation for Higher

31

Education for funding the project upon which this paper is based. All views expressed in the

paper are, however, our own.

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Waters, J.L. (2006) Emergent geographies of international education and social exclusion.

Antipode, 38, 5, 1046-1068.

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Table 1. Characteristics of the ten case study HEIs

Number of HEIs in the sample

Type of HEI

Russell Group 3

Established prior to 1992, but not part of Russell Group 2

Established after 1992 2

Specialist institution 1

Geographical location

North of England and Midlands 6

South of England 4

Urban/rural location

Large city location (or campus just outside) 5

Small city location (or campus just outside) 3

Rural location 2

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i In the survey, students are asked about the extent to which they agree with the statement that ‘I am satisfied with the Students’ Union at my institution’.ii The Russell Group is comprised of 24 ‘research intensive’ HEIs, which typically occupy high positions in national league tables.iii In some overseas campuses, a separate ‘students’ association’ operates, which is separate from the students’ union at the ‘home’ campus.