Iceland has recently become a hot spot both for vacationers and for students who wish to pursue higher education (HE) in a Western context. Demographic changes in Iceland over the past 20 years have been a focus of research at the pre-, primary and the secondary level. The few projects that are available within in the HE context, focused on student experience in general and student needs as perceived by faculty (Hanna Ragnarsdóttir & Hildur Blöndal Sveinsdóttir, 2007). A further response to the changing demographics was BA and MA program offered for the first time in 2008 by the School of Education (Books, Ragnarsdóttir, Jónsson, & Macdonald, 2010). Numerous departments at the University of Iceland (UI) offer MA and PhD degrees in English for international students and a growing number of PhD dissertations are written in English as part of the internationalization of the University of Iceland. In spite of increased access to higher education, research has shown that (im)migrant students in Iceland, both first generation and second generation complete secondary school and pursue HE at a significantly lower rate than Icelandic students (Garðarsdóttir & Hauksson, 2011; Gestur Guðmundsson, Dennis Beach, & Viggo Vestel, 2013).

(Im)migrant students make up around 12% of the primary and secondary school populations (Statistics Iceland, 2016). Previous research on the student experiences, does not distinguish among students of European, more specifically Nordic origins, and student from other regions. However, research in the US as elsewhere indicates that students who are phenotypically different experiences institutes of higher education differently from their white peers (Rubin et al., 2014). The lack of research on this is to some extent due to the fact that neither the University nor other official organizations collect data on students as relates to ethnicity, race or language preferences. They do however, provide information on the state that issues the student’s passport, but only for students who come to Iceland to study, not for (im)migrant students who matriculate into HE.

This paper aims to shift the focus of research and use an intersectional and critical lens by exploring students ethnic background, parental educational attainment and gender identification. “When it comes to social inequality, people’s lives and the organization of power in a given society are better understood as being shaped not by a single axis of social division, be it race or gender or class, but by many axes that work together and influence each other” (Hill Collins & Bilge, 2016, p. 2).  Using a critical race theory lens we will explore student experiences within higher education institutions located in the greater Reykjavík area. Critical race theory argues that modern concepts of multiculturalism are insufficient as they allow, “a proliferation of difference … these differences are rarely interrogated critically…and offers no radical change in the current order” (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). In this study we focus on students who are not defined as the “traditional” students. Current provisions at the University level focus on providing international students with the needed support, however, non-traditional students such as first generation college students and in particular first generation (im)migrant students do not have access to a support system which takes into account, their language skills, their cultural capital and their habitus as contrasted to what the literature defines as the traditional college student, who is white, middle class, and has parents with HE degrees.

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