Underlife: Peer Socialization Agents' Resistance to Higher Education Diversity Narratives

Drawing on interviews with 70 college peer socialization agents (PSAs) across 42 U.S.-based institutions of higher education, this study explores how PSAs create "underlives" (Goffman, 1961) in response to their roles and expectations for communicating institutional messages about diversity. Findings from this study illuminate the ways in which institutional scripts produce tension for the PSAs who enact them and the symbolic, behavioral, and discursive ways in which PSAs use distancing strategies to resist. Most of these public-facing students employed contained strategies to preserve an underlife away from the surveillance and pressures of the institution. However, some students-especially Students of Color and those from other marginalized groups-also sometimes utilized more disruptive forms of underlife, using resistance to attempt systemic change. We illustrate these strategies by presenting two narrative vignettes of participants' experiences that explore and develop the roles of identity, relationships, environment, and expectations in influencing PSAs strategic decisions.