“Do our diversities count?” Collaborative reflections on dwelling in academe’s intersectional shadowlands

Abstract

The promotion of equity, diversity and inclusion initiatives has become routine within Anglophone universities in the Global North. However, critical race scholars have demonstrated that these well-intentioned policies are often formulated in ways that transact empty performatives, where discussions of racism are deemed too challenging. Moreover, the dynamics of social class are often missing from university diversity regimes. Using autoethnography as methodology, we suggest that the practices of “border crossings” of intersectional academics can help track the multidirectional impacts of institutional diversity and inclusion discourses within Australian universities. As class and race intermix, we operate in a metaphorical “shadowland”; our border criss-crossings and places of dwelling highlight the blurriness of privileged and marginalised identities, with some minoritised statuses seemingly too visible while others are obscured. Despite this, and albeit brought into being through largely unrewarded emotional labour, our emphasis is on demonstrating how intersectional subjects’ dialoguing in academe is a form of quiet resistance, offering hope for creating new becomings.

Keywords:

• Equity, diversity and inclusion
• higher education
• intersectionality
• shadowlands
• social class
• race

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The term derogatory “bogan” is used in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand to describe the white working-classes it parallels terms such as “chav” (UK), “redneck” and “white trash” (North America) (Threadgold, 2017).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Reshmi Lahiri-Roy

Reshmi Lahiri-Roy (she/her) is an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at Federation University’s School of Education and teaches within Deakin University’s Faculty of Arts and Education. Her research interests include the role of race in education, social and cultural inclusion of ‘others’ in academia, autoethnography as method, and emotion writing in educational/career experiences of women of colour. Her current research looks at issues of identity and belonging in relation to diasporas with special focus on women migrants within academia.

Maree Martinussen

Maree Martinussen (she/her) is McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow within Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne. Working across sociology, critical social psychology and studies of affect and emotion, Maree’s approach to studying in/equalities attempts to highlight the ‘little moments’ that make up the embodied experience of everyday life. Her research explores how social class identities are done in higher education settings in concert with other racialised and gendered identities.