The Standing Committee Education and Social Inequality aims at stimulating international comparative research on the intersections between education, (international) mobility and social inequality. It combines the research interests and experiences of two previous research clusters: the Standing Committee on Education & Social Mobility and the Research Group on International Student Mobility and Migration. The merger of these two clusters reflects the ongoing central importance of the field of education – at the primary, secondary and tertiary level – for understanding international migration patterns as well as experiences and outcomes in host country contexts. Furthermore, it is through education that social inequalities are sustained, increased, or abolished. This is why this Standing Committee also specifically focuses on “social inequality”.
The intersections between education, (international) mobility and social inequality provide an ideal starting point to combine wider social theoretical work with empirical data collections and analyses. We aim to advance critical theoretical discussions on topics of social inequalities in education, education-to-work transitions as well as international mobility and education (e.g. students and refugees). In the past, we have called attention to theories of social reproduction and we will continue to work on these realms, yet we also aim at extending the focus to, for example, organizational approaches in order to foster our understanding of the systemic and institutional production of educational trajectories and social inequality. Moreover, we seek to strengthen the topics of discrimination and racism in education and particularly invite researchers working on these topics to contribute to the SC’s activities.
EDUSOCIAL calls for panel, workshop, and paper proposals that fall into the framework of the Standing Committee.
In addition to the above, for the 2023 Annual Conference, EDUSOCIAL is particularly interested in paper proposals dealing with the following topic:
Racism, Representation, and Decolonization in Higher Education
Panel convenors: Leila Mouhib (Université libre de Bruxelles & F. Zehra Çolak Utrecht University
Racism in Higher Education and the question of the (im)possibility to decolonize institutions have recently opened large debates in academia, across various disciplines (sociology, humanities, educational sciences, ethnic studies, history, and philosophy among others). Decolonization has particularly received attention as a relevant subject and practice in response to increasing demands in a range of countries asking for attention to institutional racism, euro-centric curricula, lack of equitable representation, and the historical links between colonialism and academic institutions. These discussions have raised questions about the function of education as an emancipatory and liberating process vs inequity-reproducing institutions that maintain racialized hierarchies.
In this panel, we seek to discuss the reproduction of racism in Higher Education institutions as well as individual and collective response strategies of racialized students and faculty in different institutional, national and local contexts by asking the following questions:
- How do policies, practices, discourses, and curricula produce or perpetuate institutional racism and discrimination and shape knowledge production dynamics?
- What kind of “institutional passing’’ practices and resistance strategies are developed by racialized students and faculty in response to, for instance, exclusionary curriculum? How do they transform the learning, teaching, and socialization dynamics?
- How do ongoing debates around the decolonization of Higher Education engage with or relate to (lack of) layers of representation and marginalization based on different categories of social differentiation and their intersection (next to race also class, gender, and sexuality)?
We especially want to centralize the experiences and counter-narratives of members of non-dominant groups whose voices often remain unheard and silenced due to racialized institutional practices in Higher Education. We also aim to explore the possibility of knowledge transfer between different contexts.
We welcome papers investigating these aspects/questions in different empirical contexts and drawing on a variety of methods and theoretical approaches. Please send abstracts of max. 250 words to Leila Mouhib (
For all other submissions for the SC EDUSOCIAL, please follow the instructions below:
Individual Paper Proposals
Paper proposals should include a 250-word abstract and the name, affiliation and contact details of the author(s). Individual papers will be thematically clustered into panels. We strongly encourage authors to highlight the conceptual and methodological novelty of their contribution.
Panel Proposals
Panel proposals should include a 250-word abstract of the theme of the panel, together with min 3/max 5 thematically consistent and related 250-word paper abstracts. Submissions should also include the name, affiliation and contact details of the chair(s), discussant(s) and author(s) of each paper.
Workshop Proposals
Proposals can also be submitted for workshops. This can be, for example, book workshops, policy workshops or round tables focusing on specific topics, with the aim of discussing research or outlining future research agendas. Submissions for workshops should include a maximum of 400-word abstract as well as the names, affiliations and contact details of the organizer(s) and workshop participants (up to 10 participants, excluding the workshop chairs).
The deadline for submitting proposals is 5 December 2022 (23:59 CET). Please submit your proposals through the IMISCOE submission platform and link them to the SC “Education and Social Inequality”.