Cultivated Participation: Looking Closer at the Relationship Between Education and Participation1

Researchers have taken aim at the well‐established correlation between higher education and political participation, arguing much of the relationship is spurious. This has created an ongoing debate around what role, if any, education has in supporting participation, and continued questions around what underpins this relationship. Drawing on 63 semi‐structured interviews with young Canadians who went to school in low‐, mid‐, and high‐socioeconomic areas of Vancouver, I argue we can better answer these questions if we look at the influence of higher education in terms of a trajectory instead of an isolated treatment. Within these trajectories, I identify participatory social contexts (social contexts that produce participation as a desirable and expected activity) as key mechanisms that help develop dispositions for political participation. Participatory social contexts are more available to those on a trajectory of higher education, yet the experience of higher education itself appears to be of minor importance to participation.