Social Diversity and Inequality in University Spaces: Apprehending Philippine Higher Education Through African Student Navigations

Paper Abstract: Expanding diversity of student backgrounds amidst increasing enrolment rates and mobility programs have transformed universities and colleges worldwide. The heterogenization of student backgrounds due to differing access to various forms of capital and social networks goes in tandem with the international student mobility in universities. Of interest in this paper are African students in the Philippines. Previous studies which usually focus on the reasons for studying in the Philippines show that there is a substantial number of Sudanese, Nigerians, and Kenyans in Metro Manila universities. This paper illuminates the encounters, mutual observations, and interactions among Africans and Filipino students and how African students transform university social spaces. A particular focus is on the everyday navigation of university spaces in which African students have to perceive power dynamics, engage in the process of self-formation through practices and experiences, and plan and actualize futures and identities. This dynamic and processual nature of studying, working, and living in the university takes place in formal institutions as much as in specific everyday social spaces of belonging, alienation, and exclusion in a society other than one’s own. This leads to the questions: How do African students in Philippine higher education institutions negotiate symbolic and social boundaries in university spaces? How do their everyday navigation of boundaries and their life chances and professional trajectories differ from those of Filipino students? What do these differing student navigations tell us about social inequalities in universities? This paper will be based on statistical data and key informant interviews.