Commuting students before and during COVID-19: academic identity across home and campus spaces

Commuting students are believed to lack academic engagement because they do not ‘stick around’ on campus, but narratives of student belonging as tied to campus presence were challenged by emergency remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper reports on a longitudinal project on geographical, cultural, and emotional dimensions of students’ practices of learning in an English widening participation university. We use theories of student belonging and mobilities as thinking tools to understand the relationships between students, spaces and learning practices in constructing fluid understandings of academic identity. Between 2016 and 2021, 28 students (17 commuting; 26 undergraduate; six mature; two part-time; 20 white British) were interviewed. Geographical and cultural distance from university, but closeness to family or to the domestic duties of home, affected commuting students’ practices of learning differently before and during emergency remote learning. When distance was enforced, remote learning was not necessarily easier for commuters, who had complex responses to losing social interaction. By rethinking how the benefits of being physically around campus are conceptualised and communicated, and how commuter identity is shaped by continuing interactions across home, digital, travel and campus spaces, we argue that commuting students’ multiple experiences should inform the post-pandemic university.