Tag Archives: ethnic inequality

Videos of Conference Panel III: “Social Diversity and Education”

Chair: Jana Tschurenev (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)153_7769

Panelists:

Yusuf Sayed (Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town)

Céline Teney (Universität Bremen)

Martha Zapata Galindo* (Freie Universität Berlin)

Regions outside Europe are often attested a higher level of social heterogeneity and inequality on various axes. But even in Western Europe, social change and processes of migration have generated a greater degree of social diversity during the last decades. Which interdependencies, if any, can be traced between social heterogeneity and ideas/systems of education? In which contexts has education facilitated the empowerment of marginalized subjects and groups? How do students from different social backgrounds make use of educational opportunities? What role do habitus and practices of assessment within the educational institutions play? What influence do gender and class inequalities or other factors of social discrimination have on the accessibility of (higher) education? What experience do we have with affirmative action and quotas? When does education become a cause of social mobilization? Do the poor receive a different form of education?

Continue reading

Policies to Promote Social Inclusion and Equality in Higher Education Institutions in Latin America

Conference Paper to be presented by Martha Zapata Galindo

Martha Zapata Galindo is a Lecturer and Researcher at the Institute for Latin American Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research interests include social inclusion and higher education, intersectionality and feminist theory, social movements, women’s and feminist movements, democratization and intellectual processes in Latin America and the circulation of knowledge.

Social inclusion, equality, and diversity programs have not always been a priority in universities in Latin America. Recent analysis of the current situation and trends in higher education show various types of inequalities. Those that stand out in the social and urban areas are inequalities of gender, ethnicity and race, and income. The various strategies for social inclusion and equality that were developed in recent years, regionally and on a local level and with the support of public policies and actions, have resulted in substantial changes in university enrollment and the composition of its various populations. Among the many measures introduced to combat social exclusion in the higher education institutions of Latin America, along with projects for gender mainstreaming and scholarship programs for low-income groups in different higher education institutions of Latin American countries (Argentina Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru and Uruguay), the most noteworthy have been models that promote the inclusion of Afro-descendants and indigenous peoples, as have been implemented in Brazil, Colombia and Peru, to name a few. Despite the heterogeneity that characterizes Latin America, the range of coverage in higher education and college enrollment itself varies significantly between the different countries.  There is precise data about certain groups of recipients, for example the process of the feminization of the student enrollment in higher education in virtually all Latin American countries. However, regarding ethnic diversity – the strong presence of indigenous and Afro-descendants in many Latin American countries who have been historically marginalized in accessing education – and special-needs populations and different types of disabilities, we cannot count on the existence of reliable, comparable and up-to-date data. Continue reading

Ethnic Inequalities in the Education System in Northwestern Europe

Conference Paper to be presented by Céline Teney

Céline Teney is Junior Research Group Leader at the Centre for Social Policy Research at the University of Bremen. Previously, she held positions at the WZB Berlin Social Science Centre and the Université libre de Bruxelles. Her research interests cover the sociology of immigration, the sociology of the EU, political sociology and quantitative methodology.

Since the post-1945 period, northwestern European countries have attracted important labour-motivated immigration waves. The so-called guestworkers who immigrated in the ’60s and ’70s composed a large low-skilled labour force for most of the northwestern European countries. Meanwhile, the second and third generations of this immigration wave constitute a non-negligible segment of the population. Since second and third generations of immigrants have been entirely socialized in the receiving societies, one should expect them to benefit from the same opportunities in education and on the labour market as the population without an immigrant background. However, equal opportunity is far from being the case. Ethnic inequalities in the education system and on the labour market are indeed important challenges for the successful incorporation of immigrants and their offspring in the receiving societies. Ethnic educational inequalities, in turn, have been receiving increasing attention from the scientific community. In this presentation, I will briefly describe the inequalities in education faced by the children of former guestworkers. I will then discuss some of the possible causes leading to these ethnic inequalities.