Peer relations in higher education: raced, classed and gendered constructions and Othering

Abstract

In spite of the relative success of the Widening Participation policy and strategies to increase the numbers of students from Black and Minority and White working-class backgrounds going to university, universities in Britain continue to be White and middle-class-dominated institutions. We found, in our two-year qualitative Higher Education Funding Council England/Higher Education Academy-funded study (2010–2012), the existence of fear and raced, gendered and classed antagonisms, underpinned by White middle-class student attitudes and perspectives towards those they constructed as the Other. In the article, we discuss the development of ‘us and them’ from the perspective of White middle-class, mainly male, students, and demonstrate dysconscious racism and racialised social segregation, which in some disciplines is replicated in the learning context. The context of the research is that of a highly competitive, neoliberal, British higher education system where competitiveness for individual success is paramount. Within this context, anxieties around success and notions or perceptions of authenticity: the ‘authentic university’ and the ‘authentic student’ are palpable. These perspectives combine with White privilege and a sense of ‘supremacy’ and entitlement leading to a desire for distancing from the ‘Other’.