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Gender, Race, Inequality and Student Friendship in Higher Education
A Terrain of Struggle
Gender, Race, Inequality and Student Friendship in Higher Education
A Terrain of Struggle
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Description
With a qualitative case study of two university campuses in the United States, Ingrid E. Castro examines experiences of students in forming and sustaining close interracial friendships.
The data in this book are comprised of interviews with students conducted at two predominantly white institutions in the early 2000s, illuminating how women of various races struggled to find commonality across difference, particularly in relation to racism, white privilege and experiences with stereotyping, microaggressions and segregation on campuses. Taking a feminist approach attending to gender, race and class inequality, Castro contributes autoethnographic recollections of her experiences as a multiethnic Latina college student in the early 1990s. She then analyses Xennial women's experiences with the benefit of contemporary frameworks and theories on gendered friendships, parental protectionism, campus climate and race relations, and explores the social and academic spaces of campus, which include interest groups, classrooms, majors, and dorms as sites of interaction. The conclusion reflects on the ideology of meritocracy and current DEI efforts on campuses in the U.S., suggesting institutional and policy changes to better campus climate and increase the potential for interracial friendship formation for students. A rich, honest and detailed account of relationships emerges with significant implications for the field of friendship studies and the sociology of higher education.
Gender, Race, Inequality and Student Friendship in Higher Education is essential reading for those interested in how universities must move forward in addressing gender, race and class relations on university campuses.
Accessibility Information
Additional accessibility information
- PDF/UA-2, 1.4
- accessibility@bloomsbury.com
Hazards
The publication contains no hazards
Support for non-visual reading
Has alternative text descriptions for images
Navigation
- Page list to go to pages from the print source version
- Elements such as headings, tables, etc for structured navigation
- All or substantially all textual matter is arranged in a single logical reading order
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. Gendered Friendship
3. The Institutional Triangle
4. Racism on Campus
5. Campus Space
6. Interracial Friendships
7. Considering Inequality
Coda
Appendix A: Method, Interviewee Characteristics, Notes
Appendix B: Interview Questions
References
Index
Product details
| Published | 06 Aug 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (PDF) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 312 |
| ISBN | 9781350540989 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Illustrations | 10 bw illus |
| Series | Bloomsbury Gender and Education |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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In her highly creative sociological analysis, Castro gifts readers with a searing account of how, for women of color, finding true friends has been both meaningful and challenging across generations. Read it, you won't regret it!
Casey Stockstill, Assistant Professor, Dartmouth College, USA
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This book is a sensitive and sobering account of student friendships in higher education. Thoughtfully composed, creatively constructed and deeply reflexive, this book offers fresh insights into the politics of gender, race and class in education. Castro points out why such inequalities endure over time, and highlights why students experience higher education as a complex terrain of struggle. This book is an important contribution to relational studies of inequality in higher education. You will find it to be a valuable and engaging read.
Derron O. Wallace, Associate Professor, Brown University, USA
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Ingrid Castro has crafted a compelling page-turner that college students will genuinely want to read. Her vivid stories and thoughtful analyses about gender race, class, and the complexities of friendship are sure to draw readers in while sparking deep conversations about the sociological insights woven throughout the book.
Georgiann Davis, author of "Five Star White Trash"
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At once highly accessible, deeply personal, and firmly grounded in interviews and sociological theories and research, Castro paints an insightful yet sobering account of college friendships among women. In attending to systems of gender, race, and class at multiple levels of analysis, Castro captures the invisible webs of university life that reproduce differences and shape the foundations from which these potentially pivotal relationships may-or may not-be formed and maintained. More than this, Castro deftly illustrates for whom, how, why, and under what conditions women's college friendships may flourish, flounder, or fail to be established.
Victoria Reyes, Vice Chair & Associate Professor, University of California, Riverside, USA

























