This study develops a theoretical model to explain teacher retention challenges in culturally distinct communities through interpretive qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with northern Palestinian teachers in southern Bedouin schools. Investigating the under-researched phenomenon of intra-ethnic marginalization, it reveals how teachers’ insider–outsider paradox emerges within negative contexts of reception where kinship structures intersect state bureaucracy. Findings show this paradox is activated by the school’s institutional permeability, producing distinctive identity- and relation-based burdens while systematically limiting institutional safeguards such as administrative protection. The central theoretical contribution is the ‘feedback loop of alienation’: a self-reinforcing cycle where structural exclusion produces withdrawal the institutions misread as ‘poor cultural fit,’ justifying continued marginalization. Policy implications emphasize countering kinship capture of schools and reforming transfer systems to foster authentic belonging.

This study investigates how the socioeconomic composition of lower secondary schools in Austria’s highly tracked education system is associated with students’ subsequent educational attainment. Drawing on comprehensive register data, we examine whether students with comparable starting conditions follow different trajectories depending on school context. We find strong and persistent composition effects: attending a socially disadvantaged school is linked to a lower likelihood of Matura attainment (university entrance qualification) and a higher likelihood of early school leaving, even after accounting for prior achievement, school type, and family background. These effects are more pronounced for positive outcomes and for lower-SES students. Analyses further reveal that students from privileged backgrounds retain high educational success probabilities across contexts, while disadvantaged students are doubly burdened – by selection into less favourable schools and by heightened sensitivity to composition. Our findings highlight the lasting influence of school context and call for policies that reduce social segregation in education.

This paper presents an original empirical case for taking joy seriously to create a more inclusive and connected education. Drawing on a co-produced research project with students (n = 21) at a UK Russell Group university, we share reflections on students’ experiences of joy in higher education. Our students co-constructed meanings of joy and its relationship to their educational journeys. They revealed the conditions necessary for a joyful pedagogy and its importance within education. We recognise joy as simultaneously personal and political, drawing upon literature across sociology, psychology, philosophy and education. Recognising the structural features that impede or undermine joy in higher education, we advocate for moving towards a pedagogy of joy to realise inclusive and generative learning environments. This paper offers a contribution to the interdisciplinary but burgeoning literature on joy including Black, Crip, Queer and Feminist work. It also adds empirical and methodological insights to understanding joy in education.

This study advances understanding of forced academic displacement through interviews with 11 at-risk academics and 4 support network members navigating UK Higher Education. Drawing on Bourdieu’s field theory and Beaney’s four-zone framework, we reveal how institutional practices fail to recognize displaced scholars’ cultural, social, economic, and symbolic capital. The analysis introduces the concept of academic statelessness, a liminal condition between fields, and begins to explore an emerging concept of displacement capital as a form of collective resistance to individualized precarity, which we identify as a promising area for further research. Our findings demonstrate how at-risk academics experience profound internal contradictions when positioned as temporary humanitarian subjects rather than potential colleagues. Support structures reproduce marginalization through visa restrictions, temporal limitations, and exclusion from professional development opportunities. The study reveals how forced displacement creates distinctive educational exclusions beyond traditional stratification. These findings challenge inclusion frameworks that position diversity as additive rather than transformative, demonstrating how educational fields require structural transformation to recognize displaced scholars’ trajectories as producing legitimate academic contributions.

This study explores how teachers develop emotional knowledge about immigration through arts-based pedagogies in a graduate-level teacher education course. Grounded in the concept of difficult knowledge, it conceptualizes emotions as epistemological resources that enable critical and embodied understanding beyond cognitive engagement. Drawing on qualitative data from a 15-week course, the study examines how emotions shape teachers’ advocacy for immigrant students. Findings reveal that empathy humanized immigrant experiences, discomfort illuminated privilege, anger spurred recognition of systemic injustice, and solidarity sustained collective commitments. Arts-based and embodied approaches provided affective scaffolding, enabling participants to transform emotional dissonance into ethical and political action. By theorizing emotional knowledge as central to engaging difficult knowledge in teacher education, this study demonstrates how course design can intentionally position emotions as legitimate ways of knowing. It argues that preparing teachers to feel with and act alongside immigrant communities is crucial for cultivating affective solidarity and sustaining justice-oriented teaching.

This article examines how students at academic elite upper-secondary schools in Norway make sense of inequality, privilege, and school admission policy. Based on qualitative interviews with students at four elite schools, the analysis shows that students display awareness of social inequality, privilege by birth, and unequal opportunities. However, this awareness rarely translates into sustained critique of the grade-based admission system. Instead, students reconcile egalitarian ideals with support for competitive selection by emphasizing individual effort, motivation, and merit. They construct an image of the typical elite student as hardworking, capable, creative, and deserving. Drawing on elite-sociological approaches to the justification of privilege, the article demonstrates how, in a comparatively egalitarian culture marked by increasing inequality, elite students combine elements of social-democratic thinking with a neoliberal understanding of meritocracy.

Meritocracy promises fairness and mobility but often intensifies insecurity by converting structural inequality into moral demands for self-optimization. This study examines how China’s exam-driven meritocracy disciplines college students—especially those from marginalized backgrounds—through moralized hyper-competition. Drawing on 50 interviews and education-policy analysis and guided by Wendy Brown’s critique of neoliberal subjectivity and Lauren Berlant’s notion of cruel optimism, I identify three mechanisms that produce insecurity. First, the moralization of precarity: students internalize blame for disadvantages, placing asymmetric moral burdens on marginalized groups. Second, temporal disciplining: belief that present endurance guarantees future security fosters a receding promise that perpetuates relentless striving. Third, ritualized resistance: critiques of meritocracy coexist with competitive performance, were striving functions as symbolic proof of deservingness. I argue that insecurity operates as a disciplinary technology that shifts critique from structural injustice to individualized self-blame, sustaining inequality and challenging the myth of education as a class-equalizer, with implications for policy.

This study contributes to research on higher education (HE) inequalities by exploring how ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES) shape HE decision-making within the context of an open-admissions HE-system (Flanders), where formal barriers are minimal, in contrast to more selective HE-systems. Drawing on Bourdieu’s cultural reproduction theory, we conducted a Reflexive Thematic Analysis of qualitative interviews with 31 ethnic-cultural minority students across SES backgrounds. Despite low costs and open admission, HE-access remains unequal. Secondary school pupils rely heavily on their social and cultural capital to navigate study choices. While parental expectations are high, informational and emotional support varies with SES, underscoring the crucial role of secondary school teachers as linking social capital in supporting HE pathways. The findings suggest that removing formal barriers is insufficient for achieving equity; informal and systemic inequalities continue to shape educational trajectories, calling for broader interventions to address these hidden dimensions of HE-access in open systems.