Losing White Privilege; exploring racial resources of minority ‘white’ Dutch girls in a ‘super-diverse’ vocational school

Main Content

Author(s):

Talitha Stam(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

19. Ethnography

Format:

Paper

Session Information

19 SES 04, Ethnography Accounting Identity Construction in Education

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-23

09:00-10:30

Room:

K4.12

Chair:

Francesca Gobbo

Contribution

The aim of this paper is to explore the racial resources of minority ‘white’ girls in a ‘super-diverse’ senior vocational educational context in the Netherlands. Within super-diverse contexts, the old majority group of native ‘white’ people becomes one of the many majorities, which we can study as such (Crul et al. 2013). In this paper, I scrutinize the concept of white privilege by unpacking racial encounters in super-diverse classrooms in the Randstad, the Netherlands. By doing so, I try to make ‘white’ as a race and ethnicity more visible.

Method

School ethnography and longitudinal interviews

Expected Outcomes

The concept of white privilege is often considered as inherent to ‘white’ people. Hence, this static approach does not take significant notions such as gender, class and age into account. Intersecting these concepts with each other contributes to a more dynamic approach of white privilege. This is necessary to understand why ‘white’ female middle-aged teachers experience white privilege differently than ‘white’ female students from working-class backgrounds. In addition, the school context brings in the element of power between teachers and students, in which students depend on teachers for certain resources for achieving school results and for the development and realisation of their future aspirations (see also Stam, 2016). In short, studying white privileges as part of students’ racial resources brings us closer to understanding how ‘white’ students can realise their aspirations.

References

Crul, M, Schneider, J. and Lelie, F. (2013) Super-diversity. VU University Press. Stam, Talitha (2016): Reasons and resources: understanding pupils’ aspirations in lower vocational Dutch education, Ethnography and Education.

Author Information

Talitha Stam (presenting / submitting)

Erasmus University Rotterdam

Rotterdam

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