Becoming transclass: A significant passing in social space
An academic background can be merited—or inherited.
Are you the first in your family to graduate from college? The first generation to earn a university degree? Maybe your parents were bursting with pride when they held that diploma–something no one in the family had achieved before.
But there’s another side to that story.
Maybe you were the one explaining the academic system to your family instead of receiving guidance. Maybe tuition fees were a constant worry. Maybe you learned to code-switch so you wouldn’t feel out of place at home or at work socials.
We often use the term first-generation academic to describe experiences like these, but that term falls short. It reduces upward mobility to the phase of higher education, instead of considering what it takes to build a career and maintain a leading position in highly competitive environments over decades.
TransclassInSTEM.com is part of STEMvocacy.org, a scientific advocacy platform founded by Britta Langen in 2025.
The transclass lens is a new approach that shifts the focus from individual, entry-level metrics to the underlying structures that enable–or impede–upward trajectories long-term. The concept was developed by Chantal Jaquet, a French philosopher und university professor at University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne in 2014.
The knowledge base is still scarce on how first-generation STEM professionals maintain their position in sociological terms after their initial upwards move and how they perform career-wise later on. Transclass in STEM aims to give voice to this underrepresented group and foster awareness and belonging. By sharing life paths from all career stages in STEM, we reveal the unique challenges and dynamics that the transclass continuously navigate.
Our goal is simple: We strive to increase visibility, deepen our understanding of these exceptions, and help create better conditions for everyone.