ABSTRACT
While there is a growing body of research which explores the dramatic changes of higher education, following recent policies of widening participation and ‘internationalisation’, to date much of the research has focused on discrete ‘non-traditional’ groups. Based on qualitative data gathered from international and widening participation students, we explore the crossovers and parallels of their experiences, which is not to say that both groups are the very same. Indeed, it is the resistance to a ‘fixing’ positioning that this paper charts, negotiating points of sameness and difference. We suggest that there is failure to consider widening participation and internationalisation as two, intersecting, agendas, (re)producing class and race. Theoretically, such an approach offers an insight into contemporary class analysis in the context of mobility and racism, to comprehend how social divisions are complexly lived, where middle-class ‘international’ students may risk losing (and gaining) privilege, in (dis)similar ways to their working-class ‘home’ counterparts.
1. Introduction
This paper explores the intersecting agendas of ‘widening participation’ and ‘internationalisation’ at a time of international ‘crises’ on the future sustainability of higher education (e.g. the Browne Report in the UK; the European Union's 2020 Strategy).1 Some see the financial crisis as a chance for higher education in Europe to increase private funding, necessitating comparisons between different educational structures, spaces, and subjects in changing times. Educational regimes bring into effect specific institutional practices and procedures, as well as particular identities and materialities: the creation of (un)equal subjects within the UK context, as an explorative case study, is examined here in terms of class and racialised dimensions (Archer et al.2003; Slaughter and Rhoades 2004; Taylor 2010).
Historically, working-class groups and minority ethnic groups have been marginalised from higher education participation in the UK (Wakeling 2007; Taylor 2008; Reay et al.2009a, b; Evans 2010). Over the past decades, the nature of higher education and its constituency has changed through disputed funding arrangements, marketisation, and recent policies of widening participation and ‘internationalisation’. However, while the (re)construction of ‘non-traditional’ ‘home’ students, within changing educational policy, has been explored, the intersection between marginalised ‘home’ students and ‘international’ students has received little attention in spite of apparent commonalities, crossovers, and distinctions within and between such groups. Specifically, students face concerns about the value of their education, their environment, and themselves; different skills, knowledges, and entitlements are mobilised, variously producing a sense of being in (or out of) place. This subjective ‘sense’ is materially structured and ruptured as classed and racialised actors, and locales are negotiated from ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, intersecting different temporalities and geographies of (not) belonging (Wakeling 2007; Ahmed 2009; Erel 2010, Sherry et al.2010). White working-class students may be awkwardly placed as already ‘being’ in place (which the euphemism of ‘local’ or ‘home’ itself captures), yet still outside this. Similarly, international students may be more stratified in terms of geographical particularity, where place-based entries and evaluations are produced at different distances: not all international students are coming from the ‘same place’, bringing with them different expectations, ‘competencies’, and capitals, which are then also read and rewarded differently in their new place, rather than easily transferred and mobilised (see Erel 2010). For both groups, there are voiced concerns about their ability to succeed in a ‘new’ space, and whether they can undertake emotional, cultural, and material journeys into university institutions. This raises questions of how, for example, we (re)define the class position of these ‘non-traditional’ cohorts, and how the experience of differently located educational migrants can be used to rethink social divisions on more global scales, where universities are increasingly inhabiting such space. This question requires further exploration across different international contexts, and only some hints and glimpses of classed and racialising processes, as they impact upon widening participation and ‘international’ students in one UK institute, are provided here.
Within this explorative UK case study, we argue that there are crossovers and parallels to be charted here, which is not to say that both groups of students are the very same. It is the resistance to a ‘fixing’ positioning that this paper aims for, illustrating points of sameness and difference within and between students. In this paper, we suggest that universities are perhaps failing to consider widening participation and internationalisation as intersecting agendas with inter-related policy implications: institutional policies are likely to shift in light of anticipated funding cuts, and thus it is important to gauge the experiences of these groups within ever more precarious contexts. In terms of conceptualising the complexity of contemporary social divisions, an insight is offered into the (re)making of class and race across diverse scales (see Weis 2005; Erel 2010), with losses and gains mapped in access, finances, and ‘failures’ where middle-class ‘international’ students may risk losing (and gaining) privilege, in (dis)similar and connected ways to their working-class ‘home’ counterparts (Reay et al.2007). This research focuses on issues associated with inclusion and diversity, and aims to describe the differences, distinctions and commonalities between ‘international’2 and ‘widening participation’ students’ experiences of university. In highlighting intersections between race and class, the notion of there being two separate discrete groups, facing separate issues and presenting different changes, even challenges, will be problematised.3
2. Background: competencies and capitals
UK government equality strategies and university admissions policies often fail to explicitly name class as a barrier to entry, preferring to speak instead of ‘non-traditional’ ‘or non-standard entry’ groups (Quinn 2002; Thomas et al.2002; Archer et al. 2003; Modood 2004; Taylor 2008). It is likely that, following the Browne Report (2010), the proposed funding cuts to UK universities alongside increased tuition fees will continue this neutralising language where students are encouraged to invest in their own futures, building their individual human capital as ‘responsible’, accumulating subjects, rather than as members of groups who are differently able to do this. Indeed, discourses about race and class inequality have been both effaced and mainstreamed within politics and public policy where debate about the effects of race and class inequalities is seemingly considered to be anachronistic, replaced with words such as ‘social exclusion’, ‘inclusion’, and ‘diversity’ (Ahmed 2009; Evans 2010). Within policy, practice and in much theoretical and empirical commentary, there exists an uncomfortable conflation and separation between groups of students who are, on the one hand, problematically held up as embodying diversity while, on the other hand, are required to change, adapt, and become ‘traditional’ students, somehow at ‘home’ in the university. They are invested with a hopeful potential in standing for and embodying institutional initiatives, yet they are still positioned as deficit and failing, manifest in linguistic, financial, and cultural competencies (Evans 2010; Wakeling 2010). In the case of working-class students, this fear is evident in whether they can ‘make the grade’ and if their supported routes effectively ‘cheat’ middle-class students – and the system itself (Taylor 2008). Following this, questions arise about entitlement and even ‘authenticity’ as working-class students curiously negotiate educational disadvantages and advantages: being seen as benefiting from their ‘special status’ in accessing widening participation initiatives. This is mirrored in some institutional responses to ‘international’ students, who may be thought of as failing, particularly in relation to linguistic competencies, while being seen as propelling forward institutional capital, both economically and culturally.
The drive to ‘widen access’ to higher education articulates the need to address inequalities, whilst refusing to concretely acknowledge divergent and unequal pathways in determining access to and experience of university. Many have pointed to the ways in which such language masks what are essentially classed processes, where an often separated agenda of ‘internationalisation’ is increasingly welcomed, even marketed, on the basis of getting (another) ‘outsider’ into higher education; one who financially and culturally contributes and can ‘add’ to university ‘diversity’. These drives are embedded within a neo-liberal framework, which does very little to acknowledge ways in which class and race shape educational participation and experience (Lee and Rice 2007; Reay et al.2007, 2009a). Discourses about ‘widening access’ and ‘internationalisation’ can in fact operate to reproduce existing forms of what might be seen as symbolic violence towards working-class and minority ethnic groups. University education is marketed as the correct choice to make for those who want to better themselves, highlighted in the ‘Aimhigher’ programme, run by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) under the previous New Labour UK government. Educational disadvantage is identified as a pre-existing problem for universities which are located as separate from those processes which produce social inequality. In asking socially disadvantaged people to ‘aim higher’, such policies reproduce a narrow focus upon dispositions and attitudes, which de-contextualises continued embedded institutional inequalities – this is likely to be a heightened tension in terms of proposed tuition fee increases, where students are to invest in their own futures (Archer and Hutchings 2000; Taylor 2008; Evans 2010). Such policies raise the question of who has to change to be ‘included’; is diversity something to be ‘added in’, involving a change on the part of the educational ‘outsider’, rather than those institutionally included? Within this, white middle-classness is left unquestioned and unproblematised, not subject to change or forced movement, remaining taken for granted and mobile; not the subject of diversity but simply subject to diversity.
‘Diversity’ has become a key term in contemporary social theory, as well as in educational politics, policy and practice, and is often used as both a description of complex social realities and a prescription for how those realities should be valued, assessed, and ‘managed’ (Ahmed 2006, 2009; Walby 2009). Diversity and equality are increasingly positioned – and monitored – on the basis of ‘performance indicators’, whereby equalities frequently become easily evidenced (numerated in the existence of the ‘right number’ of overseas/non-traditional students). This ‘then’ arguably functions to re-embed, rather than challenge, certain institutionalised normativities (such as ‘whiteness’ and ‘middle class’ which are rarely named as the concern of ‘diversity’ programmes) (Taylor 2009b). Within educational policy on increased access, there are competing notions of what constitutes an appropriate measure of ‘diversity’ or ‘mix’, where class division has been euphemistically replaced by the desire to achieve a good ‘mix’ (Evans 2010; Taylor 2010). As has been addressed by Byrne (2006), members of the white middle class often value openness to ‘mix’, since this fits into ‘general liberal desires for freedom, creativity and friendliness’. Particular forms of cultural capital associated with ‘openness to mix’ constitute acquisitive middle-class subjects, where liberal commitments are nonetheless bound by the fear of ‘too much difference’ (see Skeggs 2004; Reay et al.2007; Taylor 2009a). The attitude towards educational ‘mix’ or ‘diversity’ can operate in a similar manner. The presence of worthy non-traditional students in white middle-class spaces and institutions symbolizes neo-liberal beliefs in meritocracy, where those who remain excluded from – and awkwardly inhabit – these spaces serve as a reminder of liberal limits (Taylor forthcoming).
In higher education, working-class and minority ethnic groups are often over-burdened with embodying diversity, becoming tokenistic success stories, and thus awkwardly placed as symbolising ‘just enough’ or ‘too much’. Further, the mere presence of ‘diversity’ amongst students does not necessarily encourage mutual interaction and awareness; rather, notions of ‘us’ and ‘them’ amongst both staff and students continue to pervade university life, with both classed and radicalised components and consequences. Clegg et al.'s (2003) research uncovered profound racialising discourses within higher education; where lack of ‘motivation’ was overlaid with racialising discourses, spoken of as an ‘Asian’ problem (Archer and Francis 2005). Relatedly, initiatives aimed at raising working-class pupils’ ‘desire to participate’ promote access as attractive and attainable for all, while this sentiment is not structurally supported or resourced. In both circumstances, attainment is de-contextualised, masked as ‘motivation’, which some groups are seen as lacking.
The space between political rhetoric about higher education and how it is lived and experienced is a particularly telling lens through which to examine issues of educational diversity, and indeed the ‘politics of diversity’ more generally as intersecting class and race. This paper will explore the commonalities and differences experienced by international students and widening participation students, across the substantive areas of access, finances, and being at/belonging in university. Both widening participation (WP) and internationalisation agendas are not only impacting upon admissions and recruitment policies, but also upon the experience of higher education beyond the university door, complexly (re)producing classed and racialised (im)mobilities, subjectivities and geographies.
3. Methods
This exploratory research paper draws on qualitative data gathered from questionnaires and in-depth interviews between March and May 2007 in a single UK university: a Russell Group Institution4 with a high level of commitment to widening participation and internationalisation. The institution where the research was conducted had 14,383 undergraduate students registered in December 2009, of which 1,246 were classified as overseas students for fees purposes. The majority of students, 78.2 percent, classified themselves as being from a white background, with Asian and Chinese backgrounds being the next largest groups, 7 percent and 7.3 percent respectively (HESA 2010). All participants were current students, studying both undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes, recruited through a number of means. A poster and leaflet were designed and distributed around main sites on the university campus. All students were invited to participate, although it was highlighted that the researchers were particularly interested in participation from international students and those from ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds who had, for example, entered the university through widening participation initiatives. Participants were invited to visit the project website5 where an online questionnaire had been set up (students could obtain and submit a hard copy). The same information was also distributed to students through postings on the online notice board in Virtual Learning Environments and email distribution lists which would specifically target international and widening participation students. In total, 113 questionnaires were completed and returned.6 All participants were invited to participate in in-depth interviews; it is the interview data (n =12 encompassing six UK white ‘home’ students and six ‘international’ students) and qualitative questionnaire responses which are explored here.7 We recognise that this is a small sample, and no claims for representativeness are made: rather, we hope these exploratory reflections inspire further investigation, with a necessary focus on the differences within and between ‘international’ and ‘widening participation’ students, given that our own figures are small and partial.
Students were asked about their routes into university, their experiences with studying, seminar and lecture participation, socialising, accommodation, support services, and employment. In asking respondents to self-identify in class terms, we were interested in respondents’ own subjective experience, views and (un)willingness to be known through class, as well as the changes or continuations to class status felt in attending university. University attendance may be felt as a continuation and indeed expectation of middle-class trajectories, albeit ones which may be ‘disrupted’ by traversing different social contexts as ‘international’ students. Does a middle-class educational migrant from Pakistan hold the same capital as a middle-class student from the USA? How are both of these (dis)similar to their working-class and middle-class ‘home’ counterparts? In comparing these biographies and trajectories, we examine class as produced through combined social, cultural, and economic practices rather than ‘objectively’ captured through precise naming, measuring and defining alone (Bourdieu 1984; Skeggs 2004; Erel 2010). Class identities and materialities are seen to intersect with other social positionings, such as race and gender, rather than being inhabited alone or homogeneously (Archer et al.2003); the complexity of middle-class as well as working-class experience can be attended to in highlighting the ways that it is (un)inhabited, sometimes not ‘paying off’ as a result of racialised (mis)positionings.
While not refuting the difficulties of class (dis)identifications, the overwhelming ability to define in class terms, as well as describe (‘home’ and ‘international’) classed terrains and experiences (such as locale, leisure, employment, etc.), is perhaps testament to the continued salience of class and indeed its intersectional complexity (Taylor 2007). The data that we present here have been generated, co-produced, and interpreted, rather than simply collected, which is to acknowledge constructed, competing – and enduring – classed ‘voices’. These voices intersect with race and reveal the ways in which education is not a level playing field, where class does not erase race; rather, both race and class shaped – and are shaped by – the ‘critical criteria’ of university entrance and experience.
4. Critical criteria: ‘ … are international students human or are the EU, UK students human?’
The previous UK government frequently emphasised the practical role of higher education as increasing economic opportunities and competitiveness, but often without an awareness of pre-existing finances on the part of students as ‘critical criteria’ in (dis)allowing access and an ability to ‘compete’. At the same time, students acquire vast debt, particularly impacting upon international students, via higher tuition fees, and those from working-class backgrounds, who are the targets of widening participation programmes: such students are unlikely to ‘invest’ in such a risk, unable to view themselves as solidly stable capital-accumulating subjects (Archer et al.2003; Sherry et al.2010). With the recently proposed funding cuts from the Conservative–Liberal Democrat government, and increased tuition fees, existing classed exclusions are arguably cemented and entrenched, now debated at increasingly international scales, as a measure, cause, and solution of economic ‘crisis’: future workers are anticipated as good citizens, investing in themselves as working against the ‘drain’ on public services.
Relatedly, Skeggs highlights the compounding of other classed exclusions in the UK higher education context, where materialities and subjectivities interface to produce classed entitlements (‘we pay for it, we should get service’), reflected in educational investments in the self marked through potential, worth, and value, with the aim of building on classed futures. It is important to ask which students can effectively draw upon such consumerist discourses, paying attention to the different classed and racialised placements and (dis)investments within this, where some presences are seen as ‘fraudulent’, as costs on the system. The risks and benefits associated with higher education participation are unequally distributed and often remain a more difficult, ‘risky’ and costly choice for some students more than others. This is not to conceptualise ‘risk’ additively, whereby certain students input to secure an output; rather than mapping additive returns, the intersection of classed and racialised positionings suggests ongoing complexities in the securing of value and the management of risk.
All 12 interviewees, whether widening participation students or international students, were keen to make sure their degrees pay off, in financial and social terms, with CV building spoken of as a necessity. Indeed, it was the value of a UK degree which inspired Hardeep's application:
I had no plan to come to the UK…my managers said ‘Could you please do a shortlist of people?’ so I said ‘What is the criteria?’, ‘The person who has a foreign qualification from the UK, USA, you should separate their CV because we want to look at it’. On that day it just came straight into my mind ‘What I am doing if I had a degree qualification from foreign, like UK, might I have a good salary?’ (Hardeep, middle class, India)
When you read on the website about fees for international students and the fee for EU and UK students, there is a difference of thousands of pounds. I don't know, are international students human or are the EU, UK student human? I don't know what the criteria is. (Hardeep, middle class, India)
All students had an investment in the reputation of the university, but again, this was articulated differently amongst interviewees with distinctions between students who found themselves surprised to be at university (and had made cautionary UCAS back-up choices in newer universities) as against those who had made and resented the financial input, perhaps intensifying concerns for pay-offs and returns (Skeggs 1995): ‘Well, basically it's about reputation 'cause, well for international students you spend a lot of money on your education and it's about getting the feedback, getting the return from the uni as much as you can’ (Kenji, lower middle class, Japan).
Given his financial investment and struggle, Hardeep, like Kenji, was concerned that his degree paid off. However, Hardeep's struggling sentiments are literally coming from a very different place from Kenji's, framed by devaluation rather than purely financial evaluations (or ‘returns’); both accounts differently impress the ‘value’ of degrees and the (dis)positions they require. Relatedly, Sarah, who accessed university through a widening participation initiative, expressed gratitude at getting into university, accordingly feeling highly motivated. In being eligible for a small bursary, Sarah is perhaps unable to draw upon consumerist notions of having spent the money and deserving the service (Skeggs 1995; Archer et al.2003). Interestingly, her attendance is then positioned as potentially fraudulent where the widening participation route, in allowing entry based on grades that are below the university standard offer on successful completion of a pre-entry summer school, is seen as a ‘cheat's way’ of getting into university: ‘Without it [the widening participation scheme] I couldn't have got into uni. I know some of my friends thought “Oh, it's a cheat's way of getting in”’ (Sarah, working class, UK).
While financial issues were pertinent to all interviewees, they were differently able to negotiate this, with their different routes into university sometimes highlighting this distinction. These disparities were widely commented upon across ‘groups’ of students, rather than seen simply as the concern of one group, as apparent in one survey respondent's description of financial inequity: ‘I don't think that students are all equal here... International students have to pay generally larger fees which I don't think is fair, if we are all equal we should all pay equal amounts’ (survey response male, working class, UK).
There were voiced concerns about the ability to succeed and ‘fit in’ in a ‘new’ space, and whether emotional, cultural, and material journeys into university institutions, would be recognised and would ‘pay off’ or whether they would be mis-recognised as ‘fraudulent’ (‘cheat’), relevant in terms of both finances and feelings (Reay et al.2009a, b; Erel 2010). Just as access to university was neither smooth nor equalised, experiences thereafter often heightened rather than diffused racial and class inequalities, demonstrating the actual price of ‘diversity’, seen as an enhancing cultural capital for some (an educational ‘mix’) or as an excess and deficit (Ahmed 2006, 2009; Reay et al.2007).
5. Educational ‘mix’
As Byrne (2006) and Reay et al. (2007) have demonstrated in relation to parental choice of school, there was a degree of ambivalence amongst students about how ‘mixed’, cosmopolitan, or ‘diverse’ their university was. This ambivalence extended to individual interviewees when they personally were seen to embody an outsider difference (as ‘deficit’) and who were therefore restricted in viewing themselves as subjects of worth and value, as ‘adding’ something to – or feeling and moving into – the ‘mix’. Sarah is keen to note the range of provisioning for different groups of students, feeling pride in this non-discriminatory stance, yet still noting that some are ‘more equal than others’:
I mean you see people from all races, all ages and from all parts of the UK at the uni, so I think that's evidence enough that, em, it doesn't seem to discriminate against any kind of background, on race or anything…I suppose it makes us feel proud to be part of a university that is diverse and doesn't just accept a certain type of person and is discriminating to others…I feel that we are all equal but I think some people feel that they are a bit more higher than anyone else (laughs). But to be honest we are all equal. All of the foreign students, the international students, they get the same as us, which is good, they don't get singled out at all. Em, yeah, so I think we are all equal. (Sarah, working class, UK)
X students are seen as upper middle-class stereotype yet there is clearly a vast mix from very poor to very rich class backgrounds. As for ethnic diversity, X university also has a range of backgrounds. It only takes a trip to the language library to see this and most importantly everybody is treated equally. (Survey respondent, male, working class, UK)
From the composition of the university, the large composition of the international students, you can see that most of the international students don't speak much in the educational environment. I mean they are sitting in the lecture room but they don't, they don't study actively. You cannot just fill the room. In appearance it's international, but underneath it's not. (Kenji, lower middle class, Japan)
Classed identities were pinned to classed locations inside and outside the university campus, where spatial imaginings actively (re)produce class(ing) (Haylett 2001; Gidley and Rooke 2010). As Skeggs (2004: 15) points out, ‘in contemporary Britain, geographical referencing is one of the contemporary shorthand ways of speaking class’. Sarah described this divide as one between ‘rahs’ and ‘povs’, between upper/middle-class students and ‘local’/working-class students, creating a rather ‘intimidating’ setting, where boundaries and distinct divides had to be carefully navigated (Taylor 2008; Reay et al.2009a):
Em, I suppose like in seminar groups, eh, last year there was a distinct divide. There was me and my friends then there were the ‘rahs’ and quite often we used to get into debates and we used to always be ‘them’ against ‘us’. I suppose in a way it made me feel like I couldn't speak up sometimes because I'm quite shy and I don't like the fact that they could kinda like bring us down and say that I was wrong. (Sarah, working class, UK)
I think very much in this country, class background has a lot to do with it, only because I see kids who went to nice schools, what you guys call public schools here, right? Coming from all the same backgrounds, pretty much wealthy, upper class. You don't see like a typical Geordie stereotype, you don't see people coming from that type of background. (John, upper middle class, USA)
Clearly, international students also had ideas about the range of cultural diversity which they expected to gain in accessing university – different groups of students, from various countries, are situated differently within this, as repeating, additional, or excessive to their own diversity. So, for example, Mei wanted students from all countries to attend her class, while Kenji spoke of being surprised and unsettled by the number of Irish students:
I prefer a course, we have classmates who are European, I hope I can get some experience of a culture gap from the other people. The majority of my classmates come from China and Taiwan; that's ok for me. I hope I can get classmates from other countries. (Mei, middle class, Taiwan)
One thing that I'd like to point out is that I didn't expect so many Irish in this university, and I'm living with Irish people, which is quite difficult to understand these Irish/English differences. (Kenji, lower middle class, Japan)
If nothing else, this acts as testimony to the diversity amongst international students, often easily conceptualised as a straightforward market group, with distinct needs, where the difference within ‘international’ students – and indeed intra-group differentiation – is often effaced. Yet the issue of who takes responsibility for such ‘diversity’, to be worked upon as embodied knowledge and competency within a learning context, is a significant one. All too often, students themselves are expected to change, to learn and improve – positionings which are racialised and classed – while the university system itself is unproblematised. This is clear in Mei's statement:
Actually my lecturer he's very… I don't know how to say, he will focus on those who are very good and who have work experiences and I think they will focus on talent; the majority of them are European…it's ok to me, I won't feel bad about this, it's ok, I couldn't say happy (laughs)…if you are not good at communication you will get a little bit ignored. But that is ok for me. I will pay more attention to my language skills…in reflection it showed that we cannot communicate, I will think about myself ‘Oh, that's my fault’. (Mei, middle class, Taiwan)
… just today's seminar is an example. When the lecturer or the tutor is trying to find a volunteer he says ‘I will ask for a volunteer, who can speak English’ and I think the second half of that sentence is quite intimidating. (Kenji, lower middle class, Japan)
It was recently that I've started to develop a Geordie accent because my parents always told me I wouldn't marry a prince if I had a Geordie accent (laughs)... I suppose going through the [widening participation initiative] there was quite a few people with Geordie accents, with the same way as speaking as me. It hasn't made us feel out of place at all. I have found it hard to communicate sometimes. (Sarah, working class, UK)
X University has a clearly disproportionate number of upper middle-class students. They are often intimidating in academic settings, rude and do not contribute to a pleasant atmosphere around the university. (Survey respondent, female, middle class, UK)
I am one of a few people I know that has experienced prejudice from other first year students who self-admittedly considered themselves of a higher class to me because their parental income is higher than mine, and because I am from the North. (Survey respondent, female, middle class, UK, accessed through WP scheme)
6. Mixing the map
Students’ sense of belonging extended outside campus to include a feeling of the city, as welcoming, international, diverse – or not. Students do not just exist within the confines of the campus, and in moving beyond this, they take with them a sense of being ‘at home’ in the locale; important descriptors of city space included it being ‘local’ and therefore ‘home’, while others contrasted the (classed) specificity of the North East, as different from more international, cosmopolitan places, which London was seen to represent. For Sarah, the university locale was her home, and it made good financial and emotional sense for her to stay in her locality, for her to extend and utilise her emotional and material investments, where a ‘red-brick university with a very good reputation’ is right on her ‘doorstep’ (Archer et al.2003).
The sense amongst some students that the local area was their territory sometimes bred resentments against the others who were encroaching upon their turf, taking up space which was not seen as rightfully theirs (Taylor 2008). Again the intersections between class and race are apparent in the different ways students experience and negotiate this; geography, materiality, and temporality intersect here in that some students have always been in the locale, while never feeling ‘at home’ in the university, whereas other are just ‘visiting’ for the duration of their degree, with varied investments and anticipated returns, including social, educational, and leisure experience. ‘Home’ may be deliberately placed as ‘elsewhere’ as a comfort given the dissonance and lack of belonging, or it may be rendered more contingent and mobile, as something which is done. It is the latter sense of ‘travelling’ through mixed geographies, which may be a marker of privilege, encompassing both race and class. For example, one survey respondent aired frustration that she is denied a place in the city she feels is hers, given what she perceives as an influx of upper-class students, who are more able to assert their entitled place: ‘...this is where I was born and raised and so shouldn't have to feel uncomfortable in my home town due to people who have decided to study here’ (survey respondent, female, working class, UK).
Relatedly, Sarah mentions that most of her current friends are those from her local area, those who attended her secondary school, rather than those who she has met at university. She describes herself as not being fully integrated within university, not having the full student experience of living in halls, going to the pub etc. (see Archer et al.2003). Such spatialised classed investments and distinctions were recognised by local and international students. John described his unfolding sense of English culture and the relevance of class within this. He describes this as an added ‘flavour’ of diversity, which contrasts somewhat with the felt resentments and discomforts in the above quotes. Here, ‘Englishness’ becomes valued as offering access to a cultural mix, which John consumes omnivorously (as a ‘flavour’) and with a degree of confidence:
In [Halls of Residence] there wasn't that diversity, it was sort of strict upper-class English kids from London which I sort of got to know at first and I almost thought ‘Oh, this is what English people are like’ having never really been in this country. Then going to the classes helps me to see aspects of English culture... It just helps me to see the culture in a more rounded way, rather than one point of view. It's the mix of this entire country that I can just view and the different accents, rather than just the posh accent. You know I hear the Geordie accent, I hear Irish accents, I hear Cockney accents and, yeah, I like that flavour of culture. (John, upper middle class, USA)
While feeling both a degree of comfort and discomfort in being thought of as more like a UK home student, as a North American, perhaps even more ‘local’, John is quick to point out the differences between the British and US educational cultures, with the value of a UK degree being challenged somewhat (as all too ‘local’ or ‘little’, as John challenges the geographical range which UK students can access in staying in the UK, arguably making all ‘home’ (non)traditional students ‘local’). Such adventurous travels have implications for the way ‘local’ students are perceived; who is seen as taking a risk, travelling on worthy educational journeys – as against simply ‘staying put’. Resources are needed to travel across different distances, and John seems about to convert these ‘resources’ into capitals, accumulating materially and culturally as part of an acquisitive ‘good mix’, rather than having these fail or be depleted in new contexts. John's notion and experience of the ‘mobile student’ can be problematised in the differences between and amongst widening participation and international student's journeys and placements, towards, inside, and outside university. Across the different areas of university life, widening participation and international students experience a range of similar problems and pleasures, even when these may occur and be negotiated quite differently. While widening participation and internationalisation are clearly on the policy agenda, potentially threatened in contemporary moments of funding crisis, these similarities and dissimilarities and ongoing inequalities often are not.
7. Conclusion
This study has been explorative, based as it is on one case study of a UK higher education institution, using a small qualitative interview sample (n=12) and a relatively small survey sample (n=113). That said, some substantive conclusions can still be made, and further areas of investigation across the European and international context can be suggested: this is perhaps of increased importance, given the funding ‘crises’ across Europe and the existence of various frameworks and funding systems (Walby 2009), all now competing within the ‘global’ university system.
While there is a mounting body of research which explores the dramatic changes in UK higher education following policies of widening participation and ‘internationalisation’, it was noted that the research has focused on exploring the experience of these changes on discrete ‘non-traditional’ groups as either classed or racialised subjects; this has the effect of sidelining classed and racial intersections in the construction of both ‘home’ and ‘international’ students, operating materially and subjectively, where complex social divisions are felt on intimate and international scales. This was explored here in relation to accessing university, financing these journeys and feeling ‘at home’ in often strange spaces. The place of classed capitals differently translates across social contexts as both home and international students traverse complex geographies in being in and out of place: it is these renewed divisions, occurring across global–local scales, which highlight the intersectional – rather than discrete – relationship between these ‘non-traditional’ groups, where ‘home’ and ‘international’ students are not fixed as pre-defined users with pre-defined needs (confined, and numerated, for example, in specialist subject areas, in language centres and in supported summer school programmes). This paper charted the negotiation of insider/outsider positions, querying the financial penalty differently incurred and managed by ‘international’ as well as ‘home’ students in financial struggles and in sentiments of ‘fraudulence’. These accounts highlight the materiality and emotionality of incongruent locations, biographies, and subjectivities.
In critiquing the mispositioning of students, we acknowledge that both internationalisation and widening participation present a raft of challenges. Yet, institutional frames of added ‘mix’ and ‘diversity’ (increasing university ‘value’ and global competitiveness) frequently fail to consider enduring divisions, distinctions, and intersections. This was apparent in students’ accounts of discrimination and inequality in a range of places; from the classroom to the broader city. Some students are able to articulate (through legitimate linguistic, cultural, and economic capital) an acquisitive, omnivorous middle-class self, while others cannot actualise a multicultural global capital, being rendered ‘local’, strange, failing, and ‘foreign’. In terms of policy and practice, we suggest that universities are perhaps failing to consider widening participation and internationalisation as two, intersecting, agendas, (re)producing class and race.
In offering an insight into contemporary class practices and (dis)identifications in the context of mobility and racism, we hope to begin to comprehend how social divisions are complexly lived, inhabited, and translated in and outside of the spaces of higher education, rather than safely accommodated in the realm of ‘multicultural cosmopolitanism’ (Binnie et al.2006). This remains an empirical and theoretical challenge, where the (re)making of class and race across diverse scales can be captured as they relate also to the temporal identities of students as learners in often ‘risky’ places, where ‘migrating capitals’ may buffer, transfer, or fail (Bourdieu 1984; Erel 2010).
Footnotes
Within a European context, these concerns reflect broader social, economic, and cultural changes around the conceptualisation and the practices of education, employment, and identity. Higher education continues to be acknowledged as one of the primary policy responsibilities of European nation-states, significantly influenced by European level policy developments, such as the Bologna Process, and is thus a key arena in which questions of diversity, difference, division, and citizenship are being debated, contested, and reconfigured across Europe (Walby 2009).
In referring to ‘international students’, we use fee-paying status: students domiciled outside of the EU are classified as ‘overseas’ students for the purpose of tuition fees; EU students from outside the UK are classified as ‘home’ students. This definition is problematic, where the boundary of (not) belonging is financially constructed and regulated, also removing ‘home’ students from being part of an ‘international’ landscape.
In interrogating points of ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’ across these groups, we propose a sensitivity to other formations within and between student groups, such as distinctions operating between ‘local’ and ‘non-local’ home students, as also possibly complicating the divide between ‘traditional’ students and ‘others’. This could usefully be followed up in further research.
The UK Russell Group comprises 20 leading research institutions/universities in the UK. In the UK, ‘Red Brick’ institutions are those which achieved university status before the First World War. This term is applied more broadly to pre-1992 established institutions, denoting a certain style, prestige, and longevity. Post-1992 UK universities are ‘new’ universities, previously polytechnics or colleges of Higher Education.
A website (http://www.studentdiversity.co.uk) was specifically set up for this project to provide a separate space from the official university sites. This site has since been removed.
Seventy-seven female, 36 male; 4 lower working class, 27 working class, 21 lower middle class, 48 middle class, 7 upper middle class, 1 upper class, 5 other; 101 white British, 1 white Irish, 2 any other white background, 2 Pakistani, 2 Bangladeshi, 4 Chinese, 2 other Asian.
‘International’ students interviewed came from the following countries: China (two), Taiwan (one), USA (one), Pakistan (one), Japan (one).
Unlike other students in the study who were concerned with financial and tutorial support, John stated that in terms of support that could be offered to international students, the university could organise travel trips for overseas students, given what he described as ‘amazing low air fares’. The practical support which some international students articulated as needing, such as help in the language centre and help with accommodation, others dismissed as being ‘patronising’, given that they were ‘beyond that’.
Under European Union law, nationals from other EU countries are entitled to pay the same fees as UK students for higher education as long as they have been resident within the European Economic Area (the countries of the EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway) or Switzerland for three years but not mainly for the purpose of receiving full-time education.
These include the different epistemological and pedagogical styles of varying disciplinary ‘tribes’ within academia, which are rooted in contrasting models of scholarship and which value different skills and knowledges (see Bartram 2007).
Some international groups were particularly racialised and ‘grouped’ together regardless of intra-group differences. Across the data, Chinese students were often positioned in this way. At present, this study lacks data on experiences of Chinese students themselves. We are similarly unable to confirm whether these representations attach themselves to the actual presence of Chinese students (i.e. in seminars) or, as we suspect, are the imaginings/fantasies of the ‘other’ as always a racialised excess, out of place, signalled by particular bodies as always plural/mass. This merits further research. In these data, John positions as more like UK home students, where his own whiteness and the whiteness of the institution are both aligned and effaced. John states: ‘I'm just American and, you know, I thought we'd be very similar when I came here, and we are similar, and maybe the kids from, you know, Asia are more different than I am, and the kids here find that strange or different’ (John, upper middle class, USA).
Acknowledgements
This study was funded through the Faculty Futures programme at Newcastle University. An earlier version of this paper was presented by Yvette Taylor at the 2nd European Conference on the First Year Experience 2007, Sweden. We would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments.
References
Yvette Taylor is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University and held the Lillian S. Robinson Scholarship at Concordia University, Montreal (2009). Publications include Working-class Lesbian Life: Classed Outsiders (Palgrave, 2007), Lesbian and Gay Parenting: Securing Social and Educational Capitals (Palgrave, 2009), an edited collection Classed Intersections: Spaces, Selves, Knowledges (Ashgate, 2010) and (with S. Hines and M. Casey) Theorizing Intersectionality and Sexuality (Palgrave, 2010). She has published articles in a range of journals including BJSE, Education Review, Qualitative Inquiry, and Sociological Research Online. Her new book, Fitting Into Place? is forthcoming with Ashgate. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Distinguished Scholars Award held at Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University (2010–11).
Tracy Scurry is a Lecturer in Management at Newcastle University Business School. Her main research interests are in the area of graduate careers, in particular ‘non-traditional’ graduate employment, and the consequences that this has on identity. She is also exploring the role of line managers in career development and talent management. She currently holds a grant from the British Academy – ‘What is a graduate job? Insights from undergraduate students of expected graduate employment outcomes’ (with Dr John Blenkinsopp, Teesside University). She is currently developing this research to explore cross cultural perspectives of graduate careers.