Stigmatisation, identity, and educational exclusion in postindustrial societies: A qualitative synthesis of research from UK, Germany, and the Nordic countries

From existing research, we know segregation in poverty-intensive and immigrant-dense suburban spaces cannot be easily dissociated from educational inequality and exclusion. Our aim in this paper is to explore the link between urban segregation, social deprivation, migration and education by bringing together the findings from several ethnographic studies conducted in Europe. The starting point for our discussion is the findings from one meta-ethnogaphy which examined youth experiences of territorial stigmatisation, ethnification of poverty and educational inequality in economically challenged residential areas in Nordic cities. Our analysis has attempted to synthesise the findings from that study with those from ethnographies conducted in England and Germany. Results show how formal education is not only failing to contribute to the disruption of the processes which sustain social segregation, poverty and territorial stigmatisation but it is itself subjected to those. We argue that the value of education when this is conceptualised as commodity and promoted in the context of a market economy cannot but be at least partially dependent upon the inequality in its provision.