False Promises and the Racial Glass Ceiling: Can educational support programs challenge the reproduction of inequality in Higher Education?
A Keynote Address
Judit Durst
(Senior Researcher, Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Research Fellow, University College London)
Abstract: There is a commonality in Higher Education (HE)-driven social mobility of many racialized minorities in various geographical settings. Namely, that they deploy a minority mobility path to be able to socially navigate in HE under condition of institutional racial subordination. To feel at home within an institute such as a university campus, is a limited privilege denied to racially marginalized groups (Ahmed 2012) who are positioned as lacking skills and (the dominant) cultural capital that is valued by schools (Bourdieu & Passeron 1977).
Beyond the direct unwelcome context, the indirect, hidden structural barriers, the interconnected elements of the so-called racial glass ceiling contribute too to the brittle potential for HE gains in terms of its excessive and false promise of upward social mobility via privileged access to the upper tier of the labour market. It also shows the fallacy of the neoliberal mantra: the myth of meritocracy, according to which everyone who works hard can advance in society, based on their merits.
Taking stocks of these ideas, and against the mainstream deficit view of HE students from racialised (and working class) minorities, this paper advocates a “race-conscious model” (Richards 2020, Kóczé 2021) in education. Through an intersectional lens, it argues against the class-based master narrative of educational mobility studies that minimize how racialization cheapens the value of (non-dominant) cultural capital possessed by minoritized students.
Drawing on 103, in-depth, narrative life-story interviews with First-In-Family (FIF) Hungarian Roma graduates, I explore the personal experiences of the distinctive minority mobility trajectory, focusing specifically on the role of educational support programs in it. Interrogating the way in which they can facilitate HE access and retention, I also show their challenges and limitations. One of the main challenges, according to the narratives of our research participants, is the burden of responsibility they feel to act as agents for social change for their communities.
Finally, the paper suggests that the individualised burden of the upwardly mobiles for redressing social ills committed against their oppressed communities of origin could be alleviated by the reparative approach in education (Sriprakash 2023). As opposed to diversity agenda in HE, the reparative approach considers education not as a gift but as a right for all. This idea requires us to understand the interconnections between past, present and future, in both the formation of injustice and its repair.
Judit Durst is a sociologist, ethnographer, Honorary Research Fellow at the University College London, UK, in the Department of Anthropology, and a senior researcher at the Center for Social Sciences of the Hungarian Academy of Science. She had been a faculty member on CEU Summer University’s Romany Studies program for many years; and had served on the Scientific Committee of the European Academic Network on Romany Studies.
Her research focus is on social inequalities, marginalization, educational, social and geographical mobility, reproductive decision-making and recently, economic anthropology. She has led a research project funded by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences on ’The price of social mobility: the outcomes of high academic achievement for Roma and non-Roma Hungarian first generation professionals’. She’s currently a PI on a national research project on ’The moral economy of dependent relations: Rethinking dependence and livelihood in the era of financialization in Hungary”. She has published several academic papers and book chapters. Her most recent edited journal thematic issues in English are (with Ábel Bereményi and Zsanna Nyírő), „Introduction/Editorial. False promises and distinct minority mobility paths: Trajectories and costs of the education-driven social mobility of racialized ethnic groups” (Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 2024), “Reconciling habitus through Third Spaces: How do Roma and non-Roma first-in-family graduates negotiate the costs of social mobility in Hungary?” (Compare: A Journal of Comparative Education, 2023), and “Racial Glass Ceiling: The Glass Ceiling and the Labour Market Segmentation of First-in-Family Roma graduates in Hungary” (Intersections. EEJSP, 8 (2), with Julianna Boros, Zsanna Nyírő and Fanni Dés, 2022).
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This talk is given as part of the opening session of the CEU Romani Studies Conference
a hybrid conference organized by the Romani Studies Program at Central European University
with the Yehuda Elkana Center for Teaching, Learning, and Higher Education Research at CEU; the Roma Program at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University; and the Critical Romani Studies Department at Sodertorn University
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