This chapter brings together insights from studies of students’ experiences from a position that takes into account the social and cultural conditions and the institutional context of mathematics for non-specialists. It complements and expands our earlier analyses of interview data from first-year engineering students in Sweden, with a focus on the appreciation of specificities of mathematical discourse encountered in the core mathematics, their perceptions of the usefulness of mathematics, and their experiences of studying mathematics as compared to other subjects. Drawing on Bourdieu’s notions of field and habitus, we consider the control of content and pedagogy of mathematics as a service-course as an element of a larger symbolic struggle. This puts engineering students in a social position where they might be confronted with conflicting ‘rules for the game’ in core mathematics as compared to mathematics in the engineering sciences. Our findings reflect that success in the service-courses depends on recognising the criteria of pure mathematics rather than mathematical applications or modelling. We also reconstructed four different modes of perceived usefulness of mathematics. Further, we grouped students’ perceptions of relations between mathematics and other subjects into three major dimensions, considering if and how hierarchies between these subjects were produced.