‘Pushing or excluding the immigrants wouldn’t help in the learning process, you know’: an intersectional analysis of immigrant women’s higher education experiences

ABSTRACT

Despite the diversity and inclusion efforts of higher education institutions, immigrant and minority students frequently experience marginalisation that adversely affects their academic progress. In this article, we examine the under-researched population of immigrant women in Icelandic universities. Drawing on the intersectionality perspective, we focus on how sociocultural differences shape immigrant women’s educational experiences. We explore how power relations and institutional whiteness play roles in either privileging or marginalising particular student populations. The data come from life-story interviews with 16 first-generation immigrant women from Africa, Asia, Europe and South America. We use thematic analysis to show how immigrant women face academic challenges and marginalisation in the forms of othering and (in)visibility based on gender, race, language and religion. Nevertheless, they demonstrate personal agency for their academic progress. The findings underline how discussions on (in)equity in Icelandic higher education would benefit from an intersectional approach.

KEYWORDS:

• Intersectionality
• higher education
• power relations
• institutional whiteness
• immigrant women

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the participants who made this study possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by RANNIS on behalf of the Icelandic Equality Fund (Jafnréttissjóður Íslands) under Grant [190017-0551].