Sense of belonging is a pivotal concept in higher education discourses on diversity, equity, and inclusion. While existing scholarship has predominantly examined disadvantaged groups within elite universities and focused on women in STEM fields, this study shifts attention to non-elite institutional contexts. Through a qualitative inquiry, it explores how the sense of belonging is experienced and negotiated by 13 rural female undergraduates in China. Findings indicate that these students, conceptualised as incomplete urbanites, experienced a persistent erosion of affective recognition. Although they benefited from the tuition-waiver policy, an institutional form of legal recognition, the university’s geographical marginality and perceived lower status undermined their sense of full institutional validation. In response to these structural challenges, participants adopted strategies of self-reliance to attain social esteem and to cultivate a fragile yet agentic sense of belonging. The study highlights the interplay between institutional, class and gendered dimensions in shaping the sense of belonging of rural female students in non-elite higher education settings.
Zhao et al. (Thu,) studied this question.