Friendship As Emotional Infrastructure: Sustaining Belonging and Educational Participation among Racialised Young Women in Spain

Educational inclusion is often discussed in terms of access, attainment, institutional barriers, and unequal outcomes. However, for racialised young women, educational trajectories are also shaped by the everyday relationships through which belonging, recognition, safety, and exclusion are experienced. Friendship is one of these relationships, yet it is often treated as secondary to formal schooling or analysed mainly through peer effects, social capital, support, or interethnic contact. This article explores how friendships shape the educational trajectories of racialised young women in Spain and how they may sustain belonging and participation across unequal educational contexts. Drawing on 65 semi-structured interviews with women aged 18-29 from Roma, Latin American, North and Sub-Saharan African, South Asian, and broader Asian backgrounds, conducted within the #FriendsMatter research project, the study identifies friendship as an emotional infrastructure in educational life. The findings show that compulsory schooling was frequently experienced through peer racism, limited intercultural engagement, and institutional misrecognition, which constrained the formation of emotionally sustaining friendships. In post-compulsory education, however, friendships often created spaces of emotional safety, enabled recognition and relational legitimacy, and provided continuity across educational transitions. The article argues that friendships matter educationally not merely because they provide support, but because they can stabilise belonging and participation over time. In doing so, it contributes to debates on educational inclusion, recognition, and belonging by showing that friendship is a constitutive dimension of educational participation itself.