Transcript Managing social differences in higher education: Hidden distinctions [PPT 496.00KB]

Managing Social Differences in Higher Education:
Hidden Distinctions
Linda Morrice
E: [email protected]
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/education/cheer
28 June, 2016
‘Super-diversity’ and equity
• Migrant population in UK has doubled in last 20 years
• 1993 – 4% foreign born
• 2011-12% foreign born
• During 2010 estimated that refugees made up almost 5% of all
international migrants in UK (Rienzo and Vargas-Silva 2012)
• ‘Super-diversity’ and ‘diversification of diversity’ (Vertovec 2006,
2007)
28 June, 2016
2 key policy discourses for managing
difference and diversity in HE
• Widening participation discourses:
- Removing structural barriers to address under-representation
of certain groups
- Recognising and addressing issues of poverty, social
exclusion and lack of opportunity
• Competition for high fee paying non-EU students
- Policies and initiatives to support their engagement and
integration
Refugee students
Little is known about refugee students presence, absence or
experiences in HE:
- Not recognised in either WP or international discourses
- Data is not collected on entry or performance
- No targeted educational funding or support
Once refugee status confirmed can participate in HE and treated
as ‘home students’.
Means of re-establishing lives and re-building professional
identities; route out of poverty.
Establishing student identities –
legitimate capital
• Extent to which existing capital can be
deployed.
- ‘Essayist literacy’ practices (Lillis 2001)
and academic expectations
- Language barriers.
- Able to draw and build upon previous
learning, professional knowledge
Establishing student identities –
illegitimate capital and ‘deficit’
Farideh – hospital dietician from Iran.
- Struggled with unfamiliar academic
expectations and learning styles.
- ‘Institutional practice of mystery’ (Lillis
2001).
‘Some lecturers give you a lot and you have to find a little.
And some give you a little and you have to find a lot, but I
still don’t know which one is what. I have to learn how to
pick up what I need. They don’t really help…Lecturers in
Iran work much harder.’
Hidden distinctions and exclusion –
financial and emotional
•Managing complex transnational relationships
-Financial responsibilites:
‘For them it is a different story. They
phone daddy or mummy and they give
them money. In my turn my mummy or
daddy phones me, and they ask me for
money, so it's slightly different!’
Savalan
-Pain of separation, constant
anxiety about those left behind
Hidden distinctions – boundaries of
belonging
• Mental health issues
• Vulnerability of temporary refugee status and fear of deportation
• Loneliness and little sense of shared everyday practices –
cultural and financial differences.
• Rendered doubly invisible:
- Not recognised in discourses, policies and practices of HE
- Differences lived as private and hidden. Struggles and
inequalities not recognised.
The problems with widening
participation discourses
• ‘Space invaders’ occupying spaces not reserved or marked out
for them (Ahmed 2012)
• Binaries of ‘traditional’ and ‘non-traditional’. Deficit construction
and homogenising discourses (Archer and Leathwood 2003;
Gorard et al 2006).
• Binaries of ‘home’ and ‘overseas’ students; ‘inclusion’ and
‘exclusion’
• Complex differences of privilege, and inequalities, left
unexamined (Burke 2012)
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Reflection on practice
• Importance of recognising individual biography – complex
personal, social and cultural positionings
• The value of ‘local’ or ‘’partial’ knowledge which students bring
with them - the foundation from which other knowledge can be
built (Freire 1992)
• Pedagogical spaces which encourage private and silenced
differences to be made public