, ROJO MENDOZA, FELIX STALIN, Rojo-Mendoza, Félix, Sepúlveda Sánchez, Denisse, Baeza Rivas, Fernando

Higher education is considered an important dimension for building more egalitarian societies. However, despite the social value assigned to it, international evidence indicates that the social status of students families continues to prevent significant mobility in the social structure. In Chile, despite policies to increase access to higher education, the university system continues to reproduce inequalities of origin through selection, separating elite students from low-income students. In this context, little is known about the perception that university students have of the role that these institutions play in social mobility, especially for those of more disadvantaged social origins. This article explores and describes the persistence of the university dream among Chilean s students at the Catholic University of Temuco, the Chilean educational institution with the highest percentage of poor students in the country, analyzing it on the understanding that aspirations represent idealist targets of the desired social class, while expectations represent realistic goals regarding the expected social class. Based on a statistical analysis of survey data from 209 students, results show that students family origin does not prevent them from projecting themselves as part of a higher class, with the university acting as an agent that dynamizes positions to favor greater homogeneity in the future social structure. In addition, postgraduate degrees are defined as a catalyst for future social mobility. Finally, the future tensions between the still-hegemonic meritocratic discourse and the reality of the social space that these students will occupy are discussed. © 2024 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

, ROJO MENDOZA, FELIX STALIN, Alvarado Peterson, Voltaire, Rojo Mendoza, Felix

Access to housing, more than an enforceable right, has become a multidimensional problem in Chile. Faced with the impossibility of obtaining housing through subsidies, informal settlements-camps and land grabs-have expanded through the country's different cities since 2019. Given the evident collision with the Sustainable Development Goals (in particular Goal 11) commitments to sustainable cities, the Chilean State has increased its housing budget since 2020 to reactivate investment during the COVID-19 pandemic and expand the housing access alternatives for lower-class families with few possibilities chances of obtaining a bank mortgage. But is it possible to choose housing in contexts like the one described? In addition to environmental difficulties, cities in northern Chile, wedged between the sea and the desert, need to produce a socially sustainable environment in accordance with the requirements of complex, dynamic systems under permanent pressure to generate wellbeing. This manuscript seeks to explore and analyze these tensions in the cities of Iquique and Alto Hospicio, in Chile's Tarapaca Region. They form a dynamic conurbation, where daily mobility and the dispute over access to housing clash with the choice offered by the different subsidy programs and the expansion of camps on the edges of the desert. So, how far or how close is SDG 11 in places like these? Is there a viable alternative for urban sustainability in precarious spaces?