Beyond Access

Beyond Access

Supported by the UK Global Challenges Research Fund

Stemming from the HEAPS – Higher Educational Attainment Inequalities and Single-Parent Households in South Africa. project , “Beyond access: Intersectional challenges for Higher Education success in South Africa” (Brahic, Ingram, Ramnund-Mansingh, Heyes, Seedat-Khan & Arun), published in International Sociology, employs a Bourdieusian framework to identify three key configurations between family and Higher Education fields—alignment, fraught (mis)alignment, and parallel fields—that shape educational trajectories in post-apartheid South Africa. The research reveals that Black women remain disproportionately disadvantaged in South African universities and highlights the family as an under-researched site of intersectional inequalities. The authors argue for a critical policy shift away from discourses of individual resilience toward addressing the structural impact of transgenerational social reproduction in post-colonial societies.

For more information, please contact Benedicte Brahic: b.brahic@mmu.ac.uk