Caste and Its Consequences for Indian Students Aspiring for Postgraduate Education in the UK

Every year, thousands of Indian students travel to undertake advanced degrees in the United Kingdom. These students are only a fraction of the several thousand more who either apply or aspire and prepare to apply to programmes in the UK but cannot access or actualise this opportunity.

Our qualitative study hones in on Indian applicants for UK postgraduate programmes, explicitly examining how their caste location impacts both their trajectories towards and experiences of applying. By looking into the role of multiple forms of capital—social, economic, cultural and symbolic—we illustrate that it is markedly more difficult for caste-marginalised (CM) students to navigate the application process for UK postgraduate degrees. Further, their journeys leading up to the application process are significantly more precarious because of social perceptions of caste, and discrimination in academic spaces.

Based on a questionnaire, interviews and a focus-group discussion with CM and non-CM students, the study has three sections.

First, we investigate why CM students aspire to study in the UK. This includes a discussion of CM students' academic and professional goals, as well as their hopes of experiencing an international social life outside the shadow of caste.

In the second section, we document how international student mobility is socially selective, with factors like gender, economic background, and previous international study experience exacerbating inequalities shaped by caste. This section discusses caste-based exclusion from networks, informational asymmetry, lack of mentorship and the violence wrought by misleading narratives of caste merit.

Finally, the paper ends with a discussion of techniques, strategies and alternate forms of capital that our CM respondents used to navigate these inequities, as well as some suggestions they offer for systemic reform.