ABSTRACT

This timely volume explores the ways that university institutions affect the experiences of student carers and how student carers negotiate the (often conflicting) demands of care and academic work.

The book maps the experiences of student carers in academic cultures, exploring the intersectional ways in which gender, class, race and other social categories define who can take up a position as a student and a carer. It is framed by concerns of equity and diversity in higher education and ways that diverse people with wide-ranging care responsibilities are able to access and engage with degree-level study. The book promotes the idea of a more inclusive and equitable higher education environment and supports the emergence of more ‘care-full’ academic cultures which value and recognise care and carers.

The book will be highly relevant reading for academics, researchers and post-graduate students with an interest in higher education, social justice, gender studies and caring responsibilities. It will also be of interest to postgraduate students in sociology of education as well as higher education policymakers.

chapter 2|18 pages

Affective Equality in Higher Education

Resisting the Culture of Carelessness

chapter 3|18 pages

Negotiating Embodied Aspirations

Exploring the Emotional Labour of Higher Education Persistence for Female Caregivers

chapter 5|15 pages

Anything but ‘carelessness’

Employed student-mothers' experiences of low-status vocational higher education

chapter 6|15 pages

‘A Space for Me, but What about My Family?’

The Experiences of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Student Carers in UK Higher Education

chapter 7|18 pages

Resisting Colonisation

Indigenous Student-Parents' Experiences of Higher Education

chapter 8|15 pages

How the ‘caring chain’ impacts the decision to study abroad, overseas experiences and career plan

A narrative analysis about a Chinese single mother

chapter 9|17 pages

Doctoral carers

Tracing contradictory discourses and identifying possibilities for a more care-full doctoral education

chapter 11|17 pages

‘It's not only me doing things for me’

Conference participation for doctoral students with caring responsibilities

chapter 12|6 pages

Conclusion