Conference Agenda

This symposium discusses university education in various European countries (Finland, Germany, Austria and England) from the perspective of non-normative students, namely, disabled students, students racialised as non-white and students who come from working class families. International scholarly debates have theorised the lived experiences of non-normative students in university as subjection to institutional violence or misrecognition (Burke 2018; Arday 2018). This refers to the treatment of these groups of students as ‘out of place’, which causes encounters that are disruptive, require negotiation, and invite complicity (Puwar 2004).

Studies (e.g., Burke 2018; Dolmage 2017; Arday 2018) show that academia leaves students and scholars who are racialised as non-white or are disabled to struggle with various forms of exclusion, despite their claimed diversity and accessibility policies (Ahmed 2012; Brown & Leigh 2018). There is also research evidence how class-based institutional violence during academic studies causes a sense of inadequacy and not belonging among working-class students (e.g. Käyhkö 2020).

The symposium papers deal with the theories deriving from critical disability studies, critical race and whiteness studies, sociology of education and from theories concerning emancipatory knowledge production. The concepts of ableism, racialization, social (in)equality, belonging and the politics of belonging are utilized in analyzing the practices, cultures and experiences within the university education from the basis of various research projects. Methodologically, the research presented and discussed in this symposium covers and explores approaches of narrative, life-historical and collective participatory memory work studies.

Discourses in higher education and the wider academic communities have identified a stark underrepresentation of individuals with chronic conditions, disabilities and/or neurodivergence (Brown and Leigh, 2018). Statistical reports (Institute for Employment Studies, 2019; HESA, 2017, 2020; The Royal Society, 2014) highlight that the rates of disclosure fall at particular transition points, such as from undergraduate to postgraduate, from doctoral to postdoctoral researchers and from junior to senior academics. Literature considers the doctoral journey, but the role of disabilities, chronic illnesses and/or neurodivergence play in navigating the doctoral journey are not mentioned, although the decision to disclose a condition is relevant for individuals’ emotional wellbeing and the subsequent managing of the conditions. For this symposium, I report on a research project that aimed at gaining better understanding of the lived experiences of doctoral students regarding their navigation of the doctoral journey under the influence of disabilities/chronic illnesses and/or neurodivergence as well as at gaining insights into performativity and the social life of disabled/chronically ill/neurodivergent doctoral students in contemporary higher education contexts. This in-depth qualitative research was formulated as an Embodied Inquiry (Leigh and Brown, 2021) with data having been collected via interviews and through participant-supplied photographs. The study relates to 11 participants, 9 women and 2 men, of whom 5 women were long-established members of academia, whereas the other 6 participants were doctoral students or early careers researchers. The disabilities/chronic illnesses and/or neurodivergence reported by the 11 participants included: physical disabilities, mental health issues, formally diagnosed conditions, and symptoms associated with disabilities/chronic illnesses and/or neurodivergence. Thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006, 2019) highlighted that despite many improvements and developments over decades, academic buildings still are widely inaccessible, but that inaccessibility is fluid depending on how busy the building is. Postgraduate research students are careful about disclosing conditions, but they are often forced to disclose specific needs in order to access support. When postgraduate research students unwillingly share details about their illnesses and or neurodivergence, they feel significantly more marginalised than students who have taken an active decision to disclose. Ultimately, disabled, chronically ill and/or neurodivergent people are socially and emotionally lonely amongst the masses.

Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3:2, 77-101 Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2019). Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 1-9. Brown, N., & Leigh, J. (2018). Ableism in academia: where are the disabled and ill academics?. Disability & Society, 33(6), 985-989. HESA. (2017). Student Enrolments. Available at https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis accessed on 3rd November 2017. HESA. (2020). HE student enrolments by personal characteristics 2014715 to 2018/18. Available at https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/sb255/figure-4 accessed on 16th February 2020. Institute for Employment Studies. (2019). Review of Support for Disabled Students in Higher Education in England. Available at https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/media/a8152716-870b-47f2-8045-fc30e8e599e5/review-of-support-for-disabled-students-in-higher-education-in-england.pdf accessed on 16th February 2020. Leigh, J. & Brown, N. (2021). Embodied Inquiry: Research Methods. Bloomsbury. The Royal Society. (2014). A Picture of the UK Scientific Workforce. Available at https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/diversity-in-science/uk-scientific-workforce-report/ accessed on 16th February 2020.

In recent years, educational research has illustrated the persistence of social structures: Social class still has a decisive influence on educational trajectories within Europe (Hauschildt et al. 2021). Learners from working-class families are statistically underrepresented compared to their peers from academically experienced homes – as well in Austria and Germany (Kracke et al. 2018). Higher Education research is increasingly concerned with the question of how to design learning spaces in a way that prevents drop-outs from those so-called non-normative students and foster inclusion (Finnegan, Merrill & Thunborg 2014). For this symposium, I draw on a qualitative research project that aims at analysing university education and belonging to its practices and expectations from the perspectives of first-generation students. Led by the assumption that the examination of life histories can generate insights into social conditions (Dausien & Alheit 2019; Bron & Thunborg 2017), different biographical data has been generated over the course of three years (biographical-narrative interviews, diary entries, autobiographical stories of one's educational path), constructing 24 case studies of first-generation students across universities in Austria and Germany (n=4). This paper specifically explores the empowering potentials of these research methods and the question of how they can be integrated in university teaching practice. How can the use of research strategies that take one's own experience as a starting point have an empowering effect for non-normative students? How can belonging to university be constructed by using life-historical and narrative methods? The focus of the analysis is a seminar of the Bachelor's programme in Educational Science at an Austrian university, in the context of which students explored social inequality in their life course and (voluntarily) wrote autobiographical texts about their educational path. In this sense, I do not only discuss biographical, narrative research methods in terms of knowledge production, but also – in Pierre Bourdieu's sense (1997) – with regard to promoting emancipation among the study participants and shifting to the idea of knowledge production as a common process. Building on these theoretical propositions, this paper is the result of a joint reflection by two students participating in the project and one researcher. The concluding reflections highlight the emancipatory potential unfolding in autobiographical writing, underlined by an increase in reflexivity, (self-)critical thinking and experienced agency. The process of practising reflexive distance to one's own life history can be understood as an educational process that is closely linked to biographical and habitual transformations.

Bourdieu, P. (1999). Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society. Stanford Univ. Press. Bron, A., and Thunborg, C. (2017). Theorising biographical work from non-traditional students' stories in higher education. International Journal of Contemporary Sociology, 54 (2), 111–128. Dausien, B. & Alheit, P. (2019). Biographical Approaches in Education in Germany. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Finnegan, F., Merrill, B. & Thunborg, C. (2014) (eds.). Student Voices on Inequalities in European Higher Education. Challenges for Theory, Policy and Practice in a Time of Change. Routledge. Hauschildt, K., Gwosć, C., Schirmer, H. & Wartenbergh-Cras, F. (2021). Social and Economic Conditions of Student Life in Europe. EUROSTUDENT VII Synopsis of Indicators 2018–2021. wbv. Kracke, N., Middendorf, E. & Buck D. (2018). Beteiligung an Hochschulbildung, Chancen(un)gleichheit in Deutschland. (DZHW Brief 3|2018). DZHW.

Even though Finland scores relatively well in terms of educational equality of opportunity, persons with white ethnicities, middle class background and who speak national languages as first language are most likely to end up university education (Nori et al. 2020). In this presentation we analyse interviews conducted with students, who share the experiences of racialisation in Academia (lately referred students racialised as non-white). We focus on manifestations of normative whiteness in informal social encounters outside official teaching and learning situations. Our study conceptualises whiteness as a normativity that often acts invisibly but operates constantly as a racialised touchstone for belonging in Finnish universities. We regard whiteness as a hegemonic power structure and a set of norms against which ‘others’ are defined. (Keskinen & Andreassen 2017). This means that whiteness should not simply be reduced to bodily features or skin colour but rather it should be approached as a structural position of privileges that some bodies can occupy and some not due to racialising practises. Our analysis is based on 16 thematic interviews of university students. Common to all of them is that they have grown up in Finland, but their belonging to the hegemonic white, Finnish- or Swedish-speaking majority population is continuously questioned by racialisation on the basis of skin colour and/or other physical features. Our analysis has been inspired by Nirmal Puwar's (2004) question of what happens when those bodies not expected to occupy certain places, here university, do so. Our preliminary analysis suggests that from the perspective of our research participants, the university is a bastion of normative whiteness. In informal encounters, normative whiteness manifests for example as disregarding racist comments, automatic positioning out of Finnishness, and assumptions where students are regarded rather manual workers than privileged university students. The analysis of normative whiteness in informal encounters at Finnish universities troubles the Finnish collective self-image as a forerunner of educational equality (Rastas 2012). It also highlights how tightly whiteness and Finnishness are still intertwined.

Keskinen, S. & Andreassen, R. (2017) Developing Theoretical Perspectives on Racialisation and Migration. NJMR, 7(2), 64–69. Nori, H., Isopahkala-Bouret, U., & Haltia, N., (2020). Access to Higher Education (Finland). In Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies. London: Bloomsbury. Puwar, N. (2004) Space invaders: race, gender and bodies out of place. Oxford, New York: Berg. Rastas, A. (2012). Reading history through Finnish exceptionalism. In Lofsdottir, K., Jensen, L. (Eds.) Whiteness and postcolonialism in the Nordic region exceptionalism, migrant others and national identities. Surrey: Ashgate.