Are Some Displaced Students ‘More Displaced’ Than Others? How University Categorization of Displaced Students Affects Educational Inequalities in Italy.
Are Some Displaced Students ‘More Displaced’ Than Others? How University Categorization of Displaced Students Affects Educational Inequalities in Italy.
Thursday, 10 July 2025: 15:15
Location: FSE001 (Faculty of Education Sciences (FSE))
Oral Presentation
Decentering the traditional state-centric perspective, recent studies call for a stronger analysis of how other state institutions and non-state actors create and (re)negotiate migrant categories through everyday practices, policies, and narratives (Könönen, 2018). Thriving on this debate, this paper focuses on the higher education (HE) sector and explores the role of HE institutions (HEIs) and university personnel in identifying and categorizing students with a forced migration background (displaced students). Usually considered “super-disadvantaged” (Lambrechts, 2020), this category fruitfully unveils the inequalities that categorization practices might produce in granting educational rights. Thus, the paper inquires how HEIs categorize displaced students by delving into the heterogeneity of institutional provisions implemented by 12 public HEIs in the period 2015-2023. The focus is on Italy, a context whose increasing sensitivity towards displaced students has yet to be properly unpacked by dedicated research. More than 150 documents and 50 semi-structured interviews with academic and administrative staff were collected.
Documentary data confirm that Italian HEIs categorize displaced students very differently according to criteria like citizenship, legal status, previous educational attainments, and period of migration. These categories change over time and across provisions, showing HEIs responsiveness to international crises but also to shifting political interests. Overall, these findings suggest that HEIs categorization practices create new lines of inequalities between displaced students in accessing HE. Furthermore, interview data indicate that such differences mirror divergent institutional expectations on students’ academic performance and ideas of deservingness and merit. Specifically, HEIs and their personnel find themselves divided between performative and humanitarian logics, whose balance directly affect displaced students’ educational rights. In terms of policy implications, findings indicate that adopting the most comprehensive category of “at-risk students” allows universities to recognize the multifaceted and changing factors of risk underpinning displacement and to implement more inclusive provisions.
Documentary data confirm that Italian HEIs categorize displaced students very differently according to criteria like citizenship, legal status, previous educational attainments, and period of migration. These categories change over time and across provisions, showing HEIs responsiveness to international crises but also to shifting political interests. Overall, these findings suggest that HEIs categorization practices create new lines of inequalities between displaced students in accessing HE. Furthermore, interview data indicate that such differences mirror divergent institutional expectations on students’ academic performance and ideas of deservingness and merit. Specifically, HEIs and their personnel find themselves divided between performative and humanitarian logics, whose balance directly affect displaced students’ educational rights. In terms of policy implications, findings indicate that adopting the most comprehensive category of “at-risk students” allows universities to recognize the multifaceted and changing factors of risk underpinning displacement and to implement more inclusive provisions.