Conference Agenda

This study examines how gendered subjectivities are produced and constrained within transnational higher education by focusing on mainland Chinese male sexual and gender minority (SGM) students in UK universities. While international study is frequently framed in policy and popular discourse as a route to mobility, self-development and personal freedom (Delanty, 2006; Waters, 2006), existing research has shown that such narratives often obscure the structural and cultural conditions that shape students’ lived experiences (Gu & Schweisfurth, 2015; Wang, 2022). In particular, the intersection of gender, sexuality, family obligation and state politics remains underexplored within studies of transnational education, especially in relation to students from mainland China.

The central research problem addressed in this paper concerns the disrupted relationship between knowing and acting in gendered educational contexts. Although UK higher education institutions are often positioned as comparatively inclusive environments for sexual and gender minorities, participants’ accounts reveal that knowledge of institutional openness does not straightforwardly translate into sustained action, visibility or freedom in practice. Instead, students describe a suspended condition in which identity exploration is provisional and strategically managed. To conceptualise this condition, the paper advances the analytic concept of “structural pause”.

Drawing on queer temporality and chrononormativity, the paper situates structural pause at the intersection of transnational education and gender politics. Queer time highlights non-linear life trajectories and deferral of normative milestones (Halberstam, 2005), while chrononormativity foregrounds how social order is maintained through normative timelines (Freeman, 2010). However, for mainland Chinese male SGM students, such frameworks are insufficient unless placed in dialogue with Chinese feminist and masculinity scholarship. Confucian kinship norms, filial piety and patrilineal reproduction continue to shape expectations of masculinity and future-making, while contemporary nationalist discourses, including anti-‘sissy’ and de-feminisation campaigns, reassert hegemonic masculine ideals (Louie, 2002; Song, 2004; Luo et al., 2022; Ning & Poon, 2021). These forces do not remain confined to the national context but extend across borders, structuring students’ educational trajectories and imagined futures even within European higher education settings.

The concept of structural pause therefore refers to a temporarily suspended state co-produced by institutional uncertainty (e.g. migration regimes, visa temporalities), cultural discipline and state gender politics (Sharma, 2014). It captures how students’ experiences are marked not by agentic delay, but by constrained waiting, selective disclosure and strategic concealment across sites such as universities, families and workplaces (Abes & Kasch, 2007; Garvey et al., 2018). In Berlin’s (1958) terms, the relative openness encountered in the UK often constitutes a form of “negative liberty” as a temporary absence of direct constraint, rather than durable “positive liberty” that enables sustained action.

Methodologically, the paper draws on semi-structured interviews with 14 mainland Chinese male SGM students who have studied in UK higher education. Analysis is conducted using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006), situated within feminist and queer theoretical traditions. The researcher’s positionality as a queer Chinese woman educated in the UK is treated as part of the epistemic conditions of knowledge production, aligning with feminist and decolonial commitments to reflexivity and situated knowledge (Ahmed, 2006; Bao, 2021a; Zhu & Xiao, 2021).

By foregrounding structural pause, the paper demonstrates how gender and education research must grapple with the limits of linear assumptions linking knowledge to action. Rather than positioning transnational education as a site of inevitable emancipation, the analysis reveals how European higher education institutions are embedded within global circuits of gendered power. In doing so, the paper argues that education research “acts” not only through policy intervention, but through conceptual work that renders structural constraints visible, contestable and accountable within increasingly complex gendered environments.

Since the 1970s, there has been an explicit focus in higher education worldwide on widening participation among non-traditional students. While a focus on student equity is to be applauded, it is concerning that more recent iterations of a student equity discourse have tended to ignore gender, marginalising the experiences of women. This is due, in part, to the pervasive nature of neoliberalism both in education and society more broadly, which continues to downplay the importance of gender, class, ethnicity, disability, etc. If we consider the neoliberalisation of the female experience, it is important to acknowledge that girls have been positioned as the ‘success story’ of education worldwide, and that this is inherently problematic (Allen & Finn, 2024; Harris, 2004; Pomerantz & Raby, 2017; Ringrose, 2007). While there has been definite progress in terms of improving access and raising aspirations for young women, there has arguably been an overemphasis on female representation in traditionally male-dominated disciplines of study (e.g. STEM), with considerable funding directed at gender parity, which runs the risk of obscuring what education – and specifically post-compulsory education – has come to mean for women today. While great strides have been made in the equality of girls across the world, the pervasive narrative of girls’ educational success is certainly not inclusive of the experience of all girls. Given rapid social change in gender relations (e.g., #MeToo, equal pay), there is a pressing need to capture the diversity of working-class girls’ aspirations and their efforts to achieve social mobility.

This presentation draws on data from the First-in-Family Girls Project, collected over a three-year period with 22 young women who were first in their immediate family to attempt university. The girls were recruited during their final year of secondary school and then interviewed 2-3 times a year over a three-year period. Interviews were open-ended in nature and focused on how the intersection between gender and social class interacted with higher education. Discussions with the girls led to an understanding of how this interaction impacted the construction of feminine learner identities in higher education. The data highlight how they experience the transition to higher education in varied, highly fragmented ways, with differing levels of confidence, sense of belonging, and familial and institutional support. In particular, the narratives of these young women highlight how they consistently contend with neoliberal and post-feminist tropes of feminine success as they seek to locate themselves within the social structure of higher education. The data is discussed thematically with a focus on four key themes: 1) the multi-generational classed and gendered narratives that impact girls’ aspirations for, and experiences of, higher education; 2) feelings of belonging in university spaces; 3) feminine learner identities and experiences of success; and 4) how FIF girls position themselves as subjects of value. By focusing on FIF girls and how they transition from secondary school into university, I pay close attention to the intersections of class and gender and how lived experiences with both contribute to how aspirations are produced and negotiated.