‘Oh, this is really great work—especially for a Turk’: a critical race theory analysis of Turkish Belgian students’ discrimination experiences

ABSTRACT

Students of Turkish descent suffer various forms of discrimination in education in Flanders (the northern part of Belgium). Nevertheless, few studies have documented how these discrimination experiences are situated within structures of ethnic inequality in education. Adopting a critical race theory approach, experiences of Turkish Belgian university students were analysed to expose deficit assumptions towards ethnic minorities and push against inequity in education. The accounts of students show the exclusionary treatment they were exposed to despite the dominating discourses of colorblindness in education. Students’ experiences with peers highlight the pervasiveness of racism that targeted ethnic minority students based on their ethnic and social class background. Lack of minority representation, ubiquitous microaggressions, and exclusionary curriculum shape students’ experiences at university context and affirm White normativity. These findings highlight the urgency of challenging against systems and structures of racism in education. The implications for research and practice are detailed in the concluding section.

KEYWORDS:

• Discrimination
• education
• critical race theory
• microaggressions
• Turkish Belgian

Disclosure statement

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

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.