ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores ways of researching, practising, discussing and challenging 'identity' for groups and individuals, developed through a range of border crossings in their access to and participation in higher education. It also explores the transitions of identity, including the fluidity, liquidity and lack of stability in contested spaces. The book demonstrates the risks to identity and the prices paid through transgressions, struggles and border crossing. It explains ways in which higher education is a kind of diasporan space, made up both of indigenous populations who have a strong sense of belonging and of those who have travelled into and inhabit different worlds, making and re-making themselves. In considering a range of border crossings, including those that are expected and those that are not, Dr. Idit Katz and Hanoch Flum ask how constructs of identity shape senses of belonging/unbelonging for individuals and communities.
