Intersections, divisions,and distinctions: exploring widening participation and international students' experiences of higher education in the UK

While there is a growing body of research which explores the dramatic changes of higher education, following recent policies of widening participation and ‘internationalisation’, to date much of the research has focused on discrete ‘non-traditional’ groups. Based on qualitative data gathered from international and widening participation students, we explore the crossovers and parallels of their experiences, which is not to say that both groups are the very same. Indeed, it is the resistance to a ‘fixing’ positioning that this paper charts, negotiating points of sameness and difference. We suggest that there is failure to consider widening participation and internationalisation as two, intersecting, agendas, (re)producing class and race. Theoretically, such an approach offers an insight into contemporary class analysis in the context of mobility and racism, to comprehend how social divisions are complexly lived, where middle-class ‘international’ students may risk losing (and gaining) privilege, in (dis)similar ways to their working-class ‘home’ counterparts.