Peer networks as epistemic infrastructure
Rethinking social support among Turkish students in Russian-medium higher education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32674/ada85240Keywords:
Peer Networks, epistemic infrastructure, social support, Russian-medium higher education, international students, navigational capitalAbstract
This study reports a secondary analysis of phenomenologically informed, semistructured interviews with 15 Turkish undergraduate and graduate students at three universities in Moscow and examines how peer networks function beyond emotional buffering to support academic engagement and institutional navigation in Russian–medium higher education. Drawing on social support theory, communities of practice, and community cultural wealth perspectives, reflexive thematic analysis was used to develop three themes: emotional buffering, through which peer networks provided psychological protection and cultural continuity; epistemic infrastructure, through which peers mediated access to disciplinary knowledge, institutional expectations, and academic survival strategies; and cumulative institutional literacy, through which students moved from reactive coping to proactive navigation and transmitted navigational capital across cohorts. The findings extend the dominant social support literature by developing the concept of epistemic infrastructure— peer networks in linguistically demanding academic environments operating not only as psychological buffers but also as structured channels through which institutional knowledge is generated, distributed, and transmitted across student cohorts.
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