This special issue will drive fresh conversations around the intersection of race and social class within the global sociology of education and beyond. In recent years, post-racial ideologies that deny the existence of structural racism and colonial legacies have gathered pace across societies in the global north. At the same time, in countries such as the UK, race and class-based inequalities have been pitted against each other by invoking the educational performance of ‘white working-class boys’ solely through the lens of class. These discourses not only fail to grasp the complexities of the issues in hand, but actively deflect attention away from the way racial and classed inequalities within education, health, and job markets are interlocked and co-constituted. The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing cost of living crises across the globe have laid bare deep seated racial and classed inequalities. These pose challenges to existing sociological frameworks in terms of thinking about the operations of inequalities in daily lives, the effects of neoliberalism and growing social injustices. Indeed, sociological analyses of classed and racial inequalities in contemporary societies draw attention to their interconnected and global dimensions. Against this backdrop, it is more relevant than ever before to bring together new cutting-edge scholarship on the intersection of social class and race to reflect on the current state of affairs, chart new ways of thinking about these issues and thus contribute to our collective struggle for a more just and equal society. This special issue aims to do just that, and it therefore has significant potential to take sociological debates on the intersection of race and class within educational settings in new directions.
While there has been some sporadic growth in sociological scholarship that looks simultaneously at race and class in myriad contexts (Delale-O’Connor et al, 2020; Rollock et al, 2015; Reay et al, 2011; Archer, 2011), we still have a long way to go in developing a systematic sociological understanding of the reproduction of class- as well as race-based social inequalities through education. In navigating and addressing these challenges, the proposed special issue will bring together articles from around the world, and provide a cross-cultural, international and intersectional lens into the operation of race and class within diverse educational settings.
Paper submissions are sought in the following areas, but this is not an exhaustive list:
- Early years
- Primary and secondary education
- Further education
- Higher education
- Informal education
We encourage submissions from scholars based in the global south and north from all career stages. Submissions should engage with theoretical frameworks that provide critical understanding of class and race, and the intersections between these aspects of identity, to offer new insights into the enactment and experiences of identity in different contexts.
