Educated millennial Sikhs: Higher education, social mobility and identity formation among British Sikh youth

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 384-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shinder S. Thandi
Author(s):  
Jennifer Morton

Upward mobility through the path of higher education has been an article of faith for generations of working-class, low-income, and immigrant college students. While we know this path usually entails financial sacrifices and hard work, very little attention has been paid to the deep personal compromises such students have to make as they enter worlds vastly different from their own. Measuring the true cost of higher education for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, this book looks at the ethical dilemmas of upward mobility—the broken ties with family and friends, the severed connections with former communities, and the loss of identity—faced by students as they strive to earn a successful place in society. The book reframes the college experience, factoring in not just educational and career opportunities but also essential relationships with family, friends, and community. Finding that student strivers tend to give up the latter for the former, negating their sense of self, the book seeks to reverse this course. It urges educators to empower students with a new narrative of upward mobility—one that honestly situates ethical costs in historical, social, and economic contexts and that allows students to make informed decisions for themselves. The book paves a hopeful road so that students might achieve social mobility while retaining their best selves.


2021 ◽  
pp. 147490412098838
Author(s):  
Nafsika Alexiadou ◽  
Linda Rönnberg

This article examines the national and European policy contexts that shaped the Swedish internationalisation agenda in higher education since 2000, the policy ideas that were mobilised to promote it, and the national priorities that steered higher education debates. The analysis highlights how domestic and European policy priorities, as well as discourses around increasing global economic reach and building solidarity across the world, have produced an internationalisation strategy that is distinctly ‘national’. Drawing on the analysis of the most recent internationalisation strategies we argue that the particular Swedish approach to internationalisation has its ideational foundations in viewing higher education as a political instrument to promote social mobility and justice, as well as a means to develop economic competitiveness and employability capacity. In addition, internationalisation has been used to legitimise national reform goals, but also as a policy objective on its own with the ambition to position Sweden as a competitive knowledge nation in a global context.


Author(s):  
Ann-Marie Bathmaker ◽  
Nicola Ingram ◽  
Jessie Abrahams ◽  
Anthony Hoare ◽  
Richard Waller ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
pp. 026272802110559
Author(s):  
Kamlesh Narwana ◽  
Angrej Singh Gill

In the context of larger discussions of how education, employment opportunities and social mobility processes intersect, this article presents micro-evidence to interrogate the role of higher education in accessing avenues for mobility regarding employment opportunities for educated youth in India’s rural Punjab. By presenting their career ambitions and trajectories, this fieldwork-based article maps a plethora of dynamics influencing the individual journeys. The article reflects on how social capital, caste and economic marginality affect the career options and mobility potential of these young males and females. The findings reaffirm that caste, compounded by economic inequality, tends to inhibit paths to upward mobility for young people located at the lower end of traditional hierarchies. However, determined efforts by many disadvantaged young rural people to succeed, partly supported by targeted affirmative action programmes, are also showing some remarkable results that offer hope.


Author(s):  
Maria da Conceição Rego ◽  
Carlos Vieira ◽  
Isabel Vieira

Education is generally considered a valuable tool to improve individual socio-economic status. In European peripheral countries, up to the late 1970s, only a small elite had access to higher education and such privilege guaranteed a comfortable socio-economic position, not only via the job market, but also by allowing the sustainability of pre-existing social links. From then on, democratization of access to higher education should have prompted a decrease in social and economic inequalities within and across countries. However, current data still reflects that, despite gained access to social uplifting tools, individuals from less favored backgrounds appear to not have been able to close the various gaps separating them from the more privileged ones. In this chapter, the authors analyze recent data to characterize higher education attendance in Portugal, highlighting some factors that may still block the socio-economic improvement of the less favored students and suggesting policy measures to overcome them.


2019 ◽  
Vol 118 (806) ◽  
pp. 96-102
Author(s):  
Tomasz Inglot

“The region has seen a radical shift from widespread unemployment to labor shortages, a historic expansion in higher-education opportunities, and unprecedented mass migration to the West.” Seventh in a series on social mobility around the world.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-26
Author(s):  
Rogers M. Smith

At a time when authoritarian regimes are on the rise around the world, higher education in general and political science in particular are facing declining support and sharper political pressures in many places. Political scientists have long promised that their discipline can add to knowledge about politics and educate citizens. However, doubts have grown about whether our increasingly pluralistic discipline collectively generates useful knowledge and communicates it effectively in teaching and in broader public communications. Political scientists need to do more to place their particular studies within big pictures of how politics and the world work, and to synthesize their results. They must focus more on the politics of identity formation that has generated resurgent nationalisms and deep social divisions. They must strengthen their understanding and their community contributions through civically engaged research. They must also place greater emphasis on improving teaching. In these ways, modern scholars can show there is much good that political science can do.


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