My research study has a three-pronged focus on the intersection of language, class and ethnicity to understand how equitable education and employment opportunities fluctuate for students in Pakistan. The participants belong to lower socioeconomic backgrounds with varying linguistic identities and are studying in various universities across Karachi, Pakistan. The focus is on their experiences in higher education (HE) institutions as they navigate learning in English, which is not their first language. 

 While language remains the focal point of my research, it cannot be studied without considering the social, cultural, and educational contexts (Valdes, 2004). This is especially true for the post-colonial relevance of English in Pakistan. Language related research in Pakistan has focused on the medium of instruction (Rahman, 1997), language policies (Shamim, 2008) and women’s education (Durrani & Halai, 2018). However, there is a gap in voicing the experiences of linguistically and culturally diverse students in HE, who struggle with English. My research focuses on this gap. 

English plays a crucial role in social mobility in Pakistan, where a socially and economically disadvantaged population struggles to access quality education (Mustafa, 2015). While English is not widely spoken in Pakistan, it is used in education, workplaces, bureaucracy, and courts as the country’s official language (Tamim 2014). Therefore, English acts as a “gate-keeper”, affecting the social mobility of students that are not fluent in English. It is the preferred language of the elite in Pakistan, determining a person’s educational background. The status of English makes one’s class status known, because access to English is a privilege only a few can afford in the country. It therefore becomes significant as linguistic capital which students can aspire to in efforts to attain social mobility. It is the medium of instruction in all elite private schools across Pakistan, thereby creating “hierarchical structures in society” (Tamim, 2014, p.8) and reproducing “class cultural power” (Mustafa, 2015, p.189). Social classes are also understood through cultural and economic capital, and it becomes imperative to understand the relationship between these various forms of capital and linguistic capital, especially in a post-colonial context (Simpson & Cook, 2009). 

 In order to study the impact of English on student experiences and their access to opportunities in HE in Pakistan, Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural and linguistic capital have been used to frame my research angle. Bourdieu’s concepts of capital and habitus shed light, and expand on, how some students may have more privilege than others, what these privileges may look like, and how they may translate to an unfair advantage when navigating HE institutions, based on the intersection of class, ethnicity, and language in Pakistan. The elements of Bourdieu’s theories that frame this research are: (a) habitus, (b) field and (c) capital. These elements are interconnected in how they shape our understanding of social inequalities and disadvantages. 

 The experiences of these students are being explored as part of my PhD study, currently in its second year, through the following research questions:

1. What roles do the students’ linguistic and cultural capital play in their educational attainment? 

• What are the linguistic challenges (if any) that students face during their undergraduate degree programs? 
• What are the potential challenges that the students face during their degree due to their cultural capital (particularly looking at social class, ethnicity, and language)? 

2. How do other cross-cutting factors such as SES factors and economic precarity affect their educational experience and shape their opportunities during and after their undergraduate programs?

I conducted interviews from October 2022 to January 2023. Students shared their experiences of learning in English and its impact on their education, social life and job applications.

My research aims to explore students’ experiences of having to study in higher education (HE) institutions in English, which is not their first language. I interviewed students who completed their primary and secondary schooling from the same network of schools and from the same college in Karachi, Pakistan. Therefore, I opted for a merged methodological framework of case study and narrative inquiry for this research. The case study framework is considered because of the context and boundedness of the participants and their educational experiences (Sonday et al., 2020). My participants are students who attended TCF schools and TCF College, were provided with the same support in terms of English classes and guidance for university admissions, but then dispersed to different universities. What can we learn about the support and interventions provided by TCF College that can be extended to other students to expand access and participation in HE? The case study framework helped to “contextualize the participants” within the larger case of students pursuing education in English in Pakistan (Sonday et al., 2020, p. 2). The focus of narrative inquiry (NI) is on the “articulation of experience of meaning” (Thomas, 2012, p. 211). NI encourages researchers to understand their participants’ experiences by being mindful of the personal and social (interaction), of the past and present (continuity) and of place (situation) (Clandinin, 2006, p. 47). NI allowed me to gain deeper insight into the experiences of students bound by similar contexts. NI not only describes people’s experiences, but also “provides insight into people’s thoughts, emotions and interpretations” (Thomas, 2012, p. 209). My aim is not only to explore students’ experiences within HE, but their experiences and emotions as they navigated access to HE and the systems within HE. NI allows for subjectivity and focuses on local narratives, and this aligns with the purpose of my research. Data was gathered through multiple modes keeping in mind this merged methodological framework. A questionnaire allowed for the selection of participants and provided initial details that helped me prepare for the semi-structured interviews. Following the first round of interviews, I asked students to write a reflexive journal entry on their thoughts after the interview. This journal entry and data from the first round of interviews gave me insight into which participants I wanted to invite for a second interview. Following the case study method, I selected 2 participants to invite for a short second interview.

Having finished my fieldwork in Pakistan in January 2023, I have correlated my participants’ stories with Bourdieu’s conceptual tools to begin narrating their varied experiences of studying in a higher education system that requires fluency in English. The themes that have begun to emerge are that the participants felt out of place in their undergraduate universities (habitus were misaligned) and their self-confidence suffered due to lack of linguistic, economic and/or cultural capital. As first-generation university students, the participants’ parents had only studied till primary or secondary school, yet all of them were aware of the importance of English in their children’s lives. Some of the students were even encouraged by their parents to take extra classes to master English early in their education recognising their lack of linguistic capital. In addition to a lack of economic and linguistic capital, which the participants were aware of from an early stage, the participants were surprised by their lack of cultural capital. The students from private schools had different clothing, conversation topics, social groups and social activities (participation which also required economic capital, which my participants did not have). The participants narrated that English gave private school students access to knowledge and opinions, and an air of authority, that they felt they lacked. They discussed that being a first-generation university student often left them to make their own decisions and navigate university education without guidance from family. These observations of students from linguistically and economically diverse backgrounds are directly connected to Bourdieu’s tools of field, capital and habitus. Linking these findings to Bourdieu’s tools is helping me to conceptualize the stories of these students and to highlight what students from such backgrounds need in order to compete in university education to ultimately secure gainful employment and improve their social mobility.

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