ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sociol.
Sec. Sociology of Stratification
This article is part of the Research TopicEvolving Social Hierarchies: Current Patterns of Stratification in Latin America and the CaribbeanView all 5 articles
STRATIFIED CITIES, UNEQUAL EDUCATION: SOCIAL CLASS, SEGREGATION, AND EDUCATIONAL TRAJECTORIES IN METROPOLITAN BOGOTÁ
Provisionally accepted
- Universidad Externado de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia
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Education is widely recognized as a key mechanism for capability development and social mobility, yet in Latin America it operates under steeply unequal conditions. Despite extensive research on educational inequality in the region, a critical gap remains in understanding how social class – conceptualized through economic, cultural, and social capital – interacts with residential and school segregation to produce unequal educational trajectories. This study addresses this gap by examining metropolitan Bogotá as a paradigmatic case of a highly stratified Latin American metropolis, tracing mechanisms of social reproduction from preschool entry through high school completion. The study constructs a multidimensional class scheme using factor and cluster analysis, measures residential and school segregation across multiple spatial scales, and models educational trajectories through multilevel logistic regressions. It draws on three large-scale official sources: the 2018 Census (n ≈ 3 million), SABER 11 standardized tests 2010 – 2022 (n ≈ 1.5 million), and the 2021 Multipurpose Survey (292.281 people, of whom 87.183 are between 3 and 24 years). Results identify six social classes with pronounced educational disparities: while nearly all students from the elite complete high school, only 75% of the precariat do so. Cultural capital emerges as the strongest determinant (OR = 4,18 in primary education), with stage-specific effects across the educational trajectory. Territorial segregation further amplifies inequalities: belonging to the precariat, compared with the elite, reduces graduation probabilities by 96%, even after controlling for all covariates. These findings empirically substantiate Bourdieusian class theory in a Latin American context, reinforcing it through combined residential–school segregation and field segmentation. Universalization policies that overlook this territorialized class structure have limited transformative potential. The mechanisms identified are likely present in other metropolitan areas in the region marked by deep socio-spatial inequality, with significant implications for educational policy design in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Keywords: Colombia, Educational Inequality, Educational trajectories, Latin America, Residential segregation, School segregation, Social Class, Social stratification
Received: 14 Nov 2025; Accepted: 10 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Reverón Peña. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Carlos Alberto Reverón Peña
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