Student mobility and the shaping of minoritized subjectivities Insights from trajectories of students from Greenland in Denmark

• Main Author: DUC, Marine
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: minorization; social class; race; indigeneity; education; mobility; Sciences de l'Homme et Société/Géographie; Greenland
• Online Access: https://oskar-bordeaux.fr/handle/20.500.12278/91117

This paper will focus on the differential experiences of minorization articulated with student mobility in a (post)colonial context. Since some years, the number of students who grew up in Greenland and who are pursuing higher education in Denmark is rising. Growing up in a region under colonial domination that in some way, still persists, they are very often the first of their families to pursue higher education. In this context, their experiences are entwined with forms of racialization differently lived and embodied through their individual and educational path. Building on the idea that being minoritized is processual and relying on qualitative data gathered across an ongoing Ph.D. project (40 interviews, 2 focus groups with students from Greenland conducted mainly in Copenhagen), I will compare here two biographical and educational trajectories of students coming from Greenland and currently studying in Copenhagen University. The aim is to show how social class is playing a role in the shaping of colonially minoritized subjectivities at different scales through uneven capacities to be mobile during the life path, and how students are consequently negotiating their own social status mobilizing a set of practices of the self. As a conclusive remark, following the inputs of critical indigenous perspectives, this paper would like to interrogate how we can articulate race and indigeneity in this peculiar context.