Educational institutions often define, implicitly or explicitly, what an ‘ideal student’ looks like: how they communicate, how they participate, and what forms of knowledge are considered legitimate. For women from mobile and racialised communities, these expectations can create barriers to participation and belonging.
This project examines how education systems influence belonging among women from mobile and racialised communities, focusing specifically on nomadic tribal women in India and Romani women in Hungary.
The central research questions are: How do education systems condition belonging among women from mobile and racialised communities in India and Hungary? And how can their experiences inform changes in institutional practice, classroom practice, and teacher education?
While education is often understood as a pathway to inclusion, social mobility, and citizenship, existing research shows that schools and educational institutions can also reproduce inequality, normalise exclusion, and define who is recognised as a legitimate learner. Exclusion is not incidental. It is often built into how education systems are organised, how teachers are trained, and how schools imagine the “ideal” student.
Mobility, in particular, has historically been associated with deviance, instability, and moral suspicion, which can translate into institutional disadvantage. Education systems, therefore, do not simply fail to include mobile and racialised communities. They also regulate the terms on which these communities are allowed to participate and belong.
Much of the literature focuses on dropout, stigma, and exclusion, often presenting marginalised communities through absence or failure. This project instead examines women who have completed school or college education despite structural barriers, such as intensified regulation through gendered expectations surrounding mobility, care work, domestic responsibility, and social expectations.
Rather than treating these women as exceptional individuals, the project will approach their experiences as forms of institutional knowledge showing how educational systems regulate participation, produce exclusion, and condition belonging in practice.
