The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals prioritise the elimination of poverty and inequalities, and position education as key to civic and cultural participation (UN, 2015). At a European level, it is claimed that social diversity and equality in higher education (HE) are conditions of European competitiveness in the context of Europe’s changing demographic profile (Claeys-Kulik, Jørgensen, & Stöber, 2019). Yet, despite the Paris Declaration of EU member states that promoted citizenship, freedom, tolerance and non-discrimination through education (European Education and Culture Executive Agency, 2016), at an institutional level, research undertaken by the European University Association has identified barriers to the realisation of strategic objectives specifically related to equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI), particularly, lack of both resources and awareness (Claeys-Kulik, Jørgensen, & Stöber, 2019).

In contrast to the pervasive liberal humanist discourse of equality of opportunity, EDI initiatives in higher education imply awareness that students from socially marginalised demographics are likely to require additional resource and support in order to achieve equal outcomes, thereby complementing the use of participation rates as accountability-related institutional demonstrations of the inclusion of specific demographics. However, the aforementioned report notes variability in the extent to which intersectionality is addressed, where intersectionality describes student identification with ‘various dimensions of diversity’ (Claeys-Kulik, Jørgensen, & Stöber, 2019, p.24) such as gender, socio-economic disadvantage, disability. In Deleuze’s (1995) configuration of the ‘control’ society, reconfigured by Rouvroy (2013, p.157) as ‘algorithmic governmentality’, participation rate data comprises ‘infra-individual digital traces of impersonal, disparate, heterogeneous, dividualized facets of daily life and interactions’, meaning that, for instance, the embodied intersection of dis-ability and disadvantage or lower socio-economic status is neglected. The reported small-scale study focuses on higher education students’ experience of this specific intersection but problematises an additive configuration of intersectionality (the accumulation of oppressions) in favour of a working hypothesis that intersectionality denotes variable and qualitatively distinctive experiences.

Following (Charteris & Smardon, 2019, p.6), the notion of  voicework is problematic, risking tokenism and unaltered hegemonic institutional power relations. Nevertheless, this research can be read as contributing to ‘discourses of refusal’ that ‘trouble structures of neoliberal accountability and responsibilisation through setting up new spaces of refusal and reflexivity’, in contrast to discourses of governmentality and accountability which position students as, respectively, passive consumer informants (Demetriou, 2001) or as assurers of the quality of institutional provision (Keddie, 2015). We refer to the interview as intra-viewing, drawing on Foucault’s (1980, 2012) configuration of power as relational, and Deleuze’s (1994, p.29) refusal to view difference solely in terms of contradiction or opposition and positing of an underlying radical relationality. When applied to the interview, researcher and researched remain imbricated in the discourses associated with institutionally codified ethical practice, which assume a power relation and the vulnerability of socially marginalised participants (British Educational Research Association, BERA, 2018); yet, concurrent with and beneath such socially constructed individuated identities, they are also ‘larval subjects’ (Deleuze, 1994, p.78) - subjects-in-process in a relational space characterised by fluidity not fixed categories of identity.

Project aims:

1)    To investigate the lived experience of students classified as dis-abled and of lower socio-economic status.

2)    To reconfigure the interview process as a generative process (not only as a power differential between researcher-researched), affording more control to participants.  

3)    To reconsider the concept of intersectionality (rejecting additive conceptualisations) and identifying any distinctive features associated with the intersection of socio-economic status and dis-ability.

4)    To contribute to the literature on HE student 'voice' (examining discourses around 'voice' in the context of our findings).

Research question:

What is the embodied experience of the intersection of dis-ability and lower socio-economic status for HE students in an English university?

Ethical approval was granted by a Faculty Research Ethics and Integrity Committee at the University of Plymouth, UK, in January 2024. The adopted methodology is qualitative with data collection involving relatively unstructured interviews, conceived as intra-views to reflect the relational conceptualisation of power in Foucault (1980, 2012) and the radical intra-subjectivity posited by Deleuze (1994). This strategy permits adherence to BERA (2018) and institutional ethical research practice guidelines while also being informed by posthumanist theorising which precludes the objectification of participants as ‘other’ and posits an interview process in which the binary of researcher and researched is replaced by the recognition that, despite socially ascribed and fixed identities, individuals ‘express their perspectives through a necessarily vague assemblage of affects and sensations’ when encountering the possible worlds that others present (Stark, 2012, p.105); hence the generative nature of the intra-view. Participants will be recruited through professional and student networks in a purposive and opportunistic sampling process (Cohen, Manion and Morrison, 2014), following distribution of a participant information sheet advising of the aims and objectives of the research. Consent forms will be signed prior to intra-views which will be recorded and transcribed. The sample is likely to include 5-10 students drawn from undergraduate and postgraduate levels of study that are classified within the institution as having a disability and self-identifying as of lower socio-economic status or working class. Intra-views will last approximately one hour and be transcribed by the interviewer. No harm or distress caused to intra-viewees is envisaged, however, should this occur, the intra-viewer will signpost appropriate sources of support. Participants will be assured of anonymity and confidentiality through, for example, the use of fictionalised names at analysis and reporting stages, and strict adherence to secure data storage guidelines. A validation exercise will be undertaken, permitting participants to contribute to any necessary refinement of the analytic process (Pascoe Leahy, 2021). Data will be collated using NVivo software and data analysis will be executed collaboratively and reflexively, following Braun and Clarke (2020), in a reflexive, deductive, and inductive thematic analysis to identify key themes.

The outcomes are uncertain as the study is intended to be exploratory (with the potential for upscaling), however, it is anticipated that the results will contribute to an international literature that questions the positioning of students from the selected demographic: The tendency in research narratives and institutional discourse related to intersectionality to homogenise experiences through descriptors such as ‘disabled students’ and ‘disadvantaged students’ will be found to be problematic. Such unitary categories risk the neglect of the complex interplay of marginalising processes, institutional discourses, and individuated student trajectories (Shuttleworth, Wedgewood & Wilson, 2012). Similarly, it is highly likely that the uncritical mobilisation of the descriptor ‘inclusive education’ in institutional and policy discourse will be critiqued (Romstein, 2015). The influence of other marginalising factors and discourse such as gender will be shown to complicate the students’ experience of varied dis-abilities and lower socio-economic status (Jung Kim, Parish & Skinner, 2017). Primarily, the specificity of different experiences of an intersection of varied dis-abilities and relative economic disadvantage will be highlighted, prompting a reconfiguration of intersectionality. It is envisaged that participants will comment on their experiences of institutional discourses around ‘voice’ and voicework, and the extent to which their expressed views are acknowledged and acted upon. Data analysis will be completed early in 2024 and it is anticipated that data analysis will identify some of these issues and participant perspectives pertaining to them, and additional themes to be derived inductively.

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