Understanding Difference Through Life Stories: Transnational and Transcultural Positionality Among Doctoral Students of Color

• In Event: 25.050 - Nuancing Research on Difference and Marginalization in Higher Education: Studies That Complicate Investigation of Inequities

Abstract

The purpose of this presentation, based on a collaborative study conducted by two researchers from different disciplines, is two-fold: firstly, to analyze the marginality, difference, and the occasional privilege negotiated by self-identified US students of color or Third World students that ultimately culminated in being enrolled in a doctoral program in one particular university in Northeastern United States; and, secondly, to explore the discrimination, prejudice, and even outright racism in all its intersectionalities with gender, sexuality, religion, and nationality that these students have faced during their doctoral programs. The data comes from twelve students from diverse ethnicities and nationalities, and there were female as well as male research participants. Even as we focused on marginality and difference, we also took into account the resilience of our research participants as well as their support systems which allowed them upward mobility in terms of higher education despite their relatively disenfranchised backgrounds. Both short term and long term coping mechanisms were scrutinized to understand these students’ lives and their experiences in their doctoral programs. Students represented themselves as transnational or transcultural and emphasized how their repertoire of coping mechanisms included the skill of walking in multiple worlds, a skill they constantly honed. A striking difference between US students of color and students from Third World countries was that the US students were relatively less surprised at the racism they encountered, although they still found it painful and disturbing. Also women from both the US and internationally felt more intense discrimination within and outside the university. The analysis is grounded in postcolonial and decolonial theories (Issue 43 of Feminist Studies provides a good overview) as well as Critical Race Theories in Higher Education (McCoy & Rodricks, 2015). For students from the US and abroad it appeared that family emphasis on education was a key feature of their life story. Also most students had mentors outside their families that supported them. While some of the students had always wanted to get a doctorate, quite a few shared their surprise at finding themselves in a doctoral program. This particular piece of scholarship is significant in that it is very rare to find experiences of doctoral students contextualized within the larger story of their lives. While we highlight the agency of these students, we also pinpoint how structures of power both enable and constrain this agency. The study points to the need of institutional interventions at multiple points in students’ lives to both increase the number of “different” doctoral students and to reduce their marginalization during their program of study.

Authors

• Miesha Marzell, Binghamton University - SUNY

• Lubna N. Chaudhry, Binghamton University - SUNY