Educational Inequalities and the New Politics of Exclusion

Wednesday, 9 July 2025: 15:00-16:45
Location: SJES028 (Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences (JES))
RC04 Sociology of Education (host committee)

Language: English

Session format: Regular Session

At a time in which expectations for baseline educational levels are rising across the globe, many students are facing obstacles to attain the kinds and levels of schooling that they desire or warrant. Culture wars and attacks on ‘wokeness,’ initiatives by fundamentalist regimes and ultraconservative groups to restrict access to schooling for targeted groups, anti-trans measures and other punitive actions against minority students in the guise of parental rights, streaming and program placement practices that prevent or make it difficult for some students to pursue more desirable educational pathways, xenophobia and racial discrimination against immigrants and racialized minorities, anti-intellectual and anti-science stances, and numerous other developments are contributing to the reproduction of longstanding educational inequalities while generating new forms of exclusion and inequality. This session welcomes papers that explore, with reference to empirical findings and/or theoretical investigations, emerging phenomena that pose barriers to educational pathways for minority learners within specific contexts, as well as challenges to and resistance against such initiatives.

Session Organizer:
Dr. Terry WOTHERSPOON, BA, BEd, MA, PhD, University of Saskatchewan, Canada
Oral Presentations
Institutional Discourses on Ethnic Segregation: An International Comparative Analysis
Carlos LUBIÁN GRAÑA, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Christopher LUBIENSKI LUBIENSKI, Indiana University Bloomington, USA; Kristin SCHUMACHER, Indiana University Bloomington, USA
The Problem with Naming in the School Curriculum
Claudia MATUS, Center for Educational Justice, Chile
School Segregation As a Driver of Increasing Educational Inequalities: A Global Perspective
Daniel BIANCHI, Universidad de La Laguna, Spain; Leopoldo CABRERA, Universidad de La Laguna, Spain; Gabriela SICILIA, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
Studying Resistance to Racial Inequalities in Higher Education: Moving Beyond an Evaluation of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Policies
Ilke ADAM, Belgium; Dounia BOURABAIN, Faculty for Social Sciences, Belgium; Amal MIRI, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Finding ‘Who’ Is Imagined As ‘the Normative Indian’: A Study of School Textbooks
Pooja ., Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India
Distributed Papers
Storying Social Distancing with Swana Refugee Youth
Emina BUZINKIC BUZINKIC, Institute for Development and International Relations, Croatia
Inclusion in Norwegian Folk High Schools: A Quantitative Study of Student Perceptions in Schools with Further Accommodations
Synne DOKKEN-HARTBERG, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway; Svenja HAMMER, NTNU, Norway
Student Success Stories: How Seas Transform the Academic Trajectories of Vulnerable Students
Adriana AUBERT, Spain; Harkaitz ZUBIRI, University of the Basque Country, Spain