http://www.sussex.ac.uk/education/cheer

Managing Social Differences in Higher Education:

Hidden Distinctions

Linda Morrice

E: l.m.morrice@sussex.ac.uk

20 April 2023

‘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)

 

20 April 2023

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

-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

•Managing complex transnational relationships

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)

20 April 2023

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