“If you don't feel at ease socially.” Recognition, loneliness and communities in higher education

This chapter shows students’ negotiations of the meaning of study communities and their importance, students’ identity development related to (un)available and/or chosen communities and the processes of recognition or misrecognition involved in the learning trajectories into or out of communities. The chapter draws primarily on the accounts of two master’s students, illustrating their negotiations of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ and battles of belonging. The two accounts show that psychosocial problems are not indicators of a static problematic situation or condition; they develop and change according to, for example, their environment, society, the institution, the study context and may be related to enablers and barriers to negotiations of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ through opportunities of belonging to a community.