Positioning Diversity in Kenyan Schools

Front matter

Positioning Diversity in Kenyan Schools Teaching in the Face of

Inequality and Discrimination

Malve von Mollendorff

Contents

List of tables and figures Acknowledgements

1 Introduction

Diversity Experiences and Interpretations: Biographical Perspectives

CHAPTER ONE Introduction

‘I always say this: A teacher can change a society.’ (Research participant)

Education can play a central role in providing opportunities and in improving life for all people. Hence, great efforts have been made to realise the United Nations’ Education for All agenda and to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education’ for all (as stated in Sustainable Development Goal 4).' In the Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want (African Union Commission 2015) education is highlighted as key for empowering the youth and children (and for developing their potential) and for the well-being of all people. However, schools, as the main providers of formal education, have increasingly come into question concerning their role in manifesting and perpetuating social inequalities rather than reducing fragmentations, social categorisations and hierarchies. The Unesco World Inequality Database on Education’ reveals the vast disparities in countries concerning access to (and success in) education between, for example, rural and urban, female and male, rich and poor, children and youth. The United Nations Development Programme points out that inequalities often start before birth and ‘accumulate through life, often reflecting deep power imbalances’ — with education, education policy and institutions playing a key role in reproducing or transforming inequalities ‘formed deep in history’ (2019: 10).

In Kenya, severe disparities in education achievement exist between different socially and geographically positioned groups (Ng’asike 2019; Unesco 2020°). Monitoring reports show that the best and the worst performing districts in East Africa are in Kenya.* Because of its social diversity, inequality and disparities in education, Kenya was a particularly interesting case for this study, which puts teachers at its centre. Teachers’ experiences and professional practices in dealing with diversity and inequality and, thus, their potential for redirecting society towards equality, are the focus of this book.

Social diversity and inequalities as a challenge for education

Questions of social disparity and social cohesion are debated extensively by educationists around the world who seek ways for education systems to respond to the social inequality and increasing social fragmentation that destabilise democracies (Banks & Banks 2019; Spreen & Vally 2006; Walgenbach 2017). Over the past decades, these debates have increasingly employed the notion of diversity as an analytical perspective that has been generated in scientific and philosophical contexts as well as in political and social movements since the 1960s. Diversity emerged as a concept closely linked to the struggle for recognition and participation by marginalised social groups, and inherently connected to questions of social (in)equality. Referring to its origins, Vertovec states:

Contemporary scholarship on diversity condenses and builds upon decades of significant empirical and theoretical work surrounding key concepts like race, gender and sexuality as well as subjects such as discrimination, social movements and social inequality. (Vertovec 2014: 1)

Scientific interest in diversity in education settings relates to the empirical and theoretical analysis of social categorisations regarding

INTRODUCTION identities and affiliations and their interplay. Thus, group-centred diversity approaches foreground how education systems and schools discriminate and misrepresent specific social groups, and how these structures and mechanisms can be transcended to achieve equality, more social justice and less discrimination (Banks 2015; Ladson-Billings 2014; Sayed & Ahmed 2011; Walgenbach 2017). This includes efforts to equip schools and teachers to cater for groups of learners who do not meet what is considered the ‘norm in a particular school or education system. Special needs education, culturally responsive pedagogy, refugee, girl-child or multicultural education approaches have, among others, shaped some of the thinking around heterogeneity and diversity in schools in past decades.

Looking from another angle at discrimination and inequality in education, power-critical approaches focus on the social mechanisms, including the power relations and discourses, that (re)produce inequality between different societal groups — aiming to deconstruct these mechanisms and dissolve boundaries. These deconstructionist or power-centred approaches interrogate the ways in which differences concerning, for example, gender, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation or ability are constructed and become significant with regard to education and social inequality.

Intersectionality provides a framework to integrate multiple axes of difference in their simultaneous and interconnected effects. It serves as a lens to view group constructions as fluid, temporary and flexible rather than essentialised and homogeneous. When focusing on the contested space of distorted power relations and on the oppressive systems and discourses that produce axes of difference in a society, schools and teachers cannot be regarded as neutral players; they must be seen as entangled in these configurations that produce social inequality.

Synergistically, the two main concerns of diversity in education are, first, to affirm different social identities and categories referring to ethnicity, class, gender, (dis)ability, sexual orientation, age and so forth — and to acknowledge that these are powerful in shaping educational processes. This includes rearrangement of the contents, methods and organisational aspects of learning and teaching towards accommodating this diversity. Second, diversity in education intends to criticise and deconstruct differentiations, categorisations and boundary-making along specific axes of difference with their impact on particular identities, and to sensitise learners about the social mechanisms that produce inequality. This includes the development of diversity-related competencies that aim to combat discrimination, marginalisation and hierarchisation of specific groups and identities in a society.

Focusing specifically on the nexus of diversity and education, this book analyses diversity in schools and the ways in which teachers perceive, experience and respond to social diversity in their professional practice. The theoretical concepts used to look at the research problem are set in the critical interpretivist paradigm in which reality is seen as being subjective and constructed on the basis of power relations:

e Intersectionality interrogates the structures and discourses that produce social boundaries and categorisations that intersect and emerge as powerful with regard to inequality and discrimination in education.

¢ The postcolonial lens offers perspectives that consider colonial continuities to be a still-influential, powerful oppressive system when looking at diversity and education in Kenya — aiming to find areas for decolonisation.

e Critical diversity and critical pedagogy focus on process orientation for strategies and solutions: how educational practice can be geared towards (more) social justice and equality.

Drawing on these theoretical avenues, the aim of this book is to gain deeper insights into the ways in which teachers perceive and experience diversity, and how schools accommodate diversity in their institutional frameworks and practices.

The concept of diversity has been criticised for its openness and lack of theoretical and conceptual clarity (Vertovec 2014).

Introduction

Pointing to the need for contextualised research, ‘we must move past intuitive notions of what diversity means for teaching and teacher education to more research-based approaches to innovation and improvement’ (Ladson-Billings 2011: 396). Given the lack of clarity and analytical rigour, as well as the dearth of research on what diversity in educational contexts implies, I have chosen a grounded theory case study design to approach my subject of interest. This develops diversity categories and conceptualisations relevant to the specific context from the data — instead of interrogating predetermined categories of difference.

Through initial discussions with Kenyan teachers about challenges concerning various issues of social inequality and diversity, it became clear that these factors significantly affected the professional practices of teachers in Kenya — and that severe inequalities concerning educational opportunities exist, depending on specific social identities and geographical positions. One component of diversity stood out in the Kenyan context: the axis of difference concerning ethnic group affiliation, and its politicised ethnicism (referred to as ‘tribalism’). As Nyairo points out, postcolonial Kenya is grappling with ethnolinguistic group affiliations that are ‘repeatedly misrepresented as a marker of fixed identity’ (2015: 273), reducing individuals to the representation of ethnic blocs in many spheres of public life, and shaping their chances in various ways. These representations often go hand in hand with politicisation, ethnic stereotyping, tensions and conflicts over resources and political power. Nderitu also emphasises the role of tribalism when thinking about diversity in Kenya:

Kenya eats, sleeps and dreams “Tribe’. “Tribe’ is the determining factor for many social, economic and especially political decisions in Kenya ... Due to the history of a Kenya that is defined by ethnic divisions, ‘tribe’ has become the organising principle of politics. (Nderitu 2018b: 20) Consequently, these divisions also affect educational institutions? (Alwy & Schech 2004). Atthesametime, the country’s sociocultural and epistemological diversity can be seen as an abundant resource with significant potential for human development.

Kenyan education policies stress the role of education in general, and schools in particular, in promoting peace and appreciation of the country’s diversity. The Kenyan Ministry of Education (MoE) wants schools to become ‘channels of cultural integration’ and promoters of diversity in unity, nondiscrimination, peace and inclusion (Republic of Kenya 2012: 14). The guiding principles and national goals of education also emphasise the role of schools in fostering the appreciation of ethnic and cultural diversity and in eliminating hate speech and tribalism.° Hence, Kenyan schools are tasked to find ways to conciliate its (culturally, linguistically, socio-economically, etc.) diverse society — to achieve the country’s goal that education be a major contributor to building an inclusive, democratic and nondiscriminatory society.

Thinking and theorising about diversity in an African context, with its history of colonisation and anti-colonial struggles, can be daunting because many of the social categories and discriminatory practices found today can be traced back to their invention and misuse by European colonisers. This also applies to the rigid ethnic identities that were defined, ascribed and used for various divide-and-rule purposes and policies by the colonisers (wa-Mungai & Gona 2010). This study draws on postcolonialism to interrogate today’s social categorisations as being closely connected to Kenya's history of racial oppression, colonisation and _ anti-colonial struggle. The postcolonial lens, with its central notion of othering, offers a tool to scrutinise colonial continuities in teaching practice and institutional frameworks. The relevance of including postcolonialism relates to interpretation of the findings and also, to reflection on the research process itself. My position as an outsider to the research context (being a white German academic moving in the distorted power relations between the North and the South with the former’s long tradition of exploitation and knowledge extraction for the benefit of Europeans) requires conscious reflection on the intentions, methods and outcomes

INTRODUCTION of the research process. For instance, one could argue that the concept of education as schooling is not, in itself, an African concept. Precolonial African education systems were replaced by imported formal Western education in the form of schooling and enforced by the colonial powers (Ki-Zerbo 1990). After colonial rule, the Kenyan government and education ministry made some effort to integrate indigenous knowledge and mother tongue-based teaching into the school system as basis for nondiscrimination and inclusion. However, the Western system and languages still prevail in formal education settings (Owuor 2007) and are, in most cases, determinants of the opportunities people have in life. Consequently, postcolonial educational inequality remains a serious problem given that education, globally and locally, is deeply involved in political struggles over the distribution of resources and plays a major role in dividing societies into the haves and the have-nots. Formal education confers ideological and structural power to control the means of producing, consuming and accumulating symbolic and material resources (Brock-Utne 2002; Ginsburg & Lindsay 1995). Therefore, selection, exclusion and conformity need to be investigated as integral parts of any formal education system.

In so doing, this study of diversity in postcolonial Kenyan school contexts from the teachers’ perspectives follows a critical paradigm and intends to instigate transformations towards decolonising education and towards social justice. My involvement over several years in university-based cooperation projects between German, South and East African universities and our joint activitiesin teaching, learning, capacity building and teacher professional development in the ‘East and South African-German Centre of Excellence for Educational Research Methodologies and Management’, provided the basis for this study. It also facilitated constant exchange and discussions about teacher education, curriculum development and education research in African contexts.

The main questions that emerged for me from this cooperation and exchange were the following:

1. How is diversity experienced and interpreted by teachers in their professional practice in postcolonial Kenya?

2. Whatare the drivers, strategies and consequences of experienced diversity in Kenyan schools?

3. Which strategies for schools and teachers can be recommended to help reduce the reproduction of social inequalities in schools?

To achieve a contextualised understanding of the meaning of diversity from the teachers’ perspectives, I use Vertovec’s (2014) framework, which distinguishes between the configurations, representations and encounters of diversity. To find answers to the questions above, I interviewed Kenyan teachers (in public primary or secondary schools), using elements of narrative inquiry and the problem-centred interview technique. In the narrative section of the interviews, the teachers talk about their biographical experiences of diversity, discrimination and exclusion based on their own identities (see Chapter 4). These narratives offer insights into the representations and encounters of diversity in the Kenyan context; they can also be regarded as a resource for teachers in their professional teaching practice. The problem-centred interview section focuses on the teachers’ diversity-related experiences and professional practices as teachers in various Kenyan schools (Chapter 5). The data were organised, coded and theoretically sampled according to grounded theory methodology (Charmaz 2014a), which falls into place with the critical interpretivist paradigm. This process guided the way towards the development of a grounded theory of diversity in education in postcolonial Kenyan school contexts focusing on the teachers’ professional practices.

The book is presented as follows: Chapter 2 sketches the theoretical avenues for researching diversity in education in order to flesh out the critical interpretivist paradigmatic stance and sensitising concepts relevant to the research. The sensitising concepts helped clarify the notions of diversity and relevant theories that I used as a lens to guide the construction of a grounded theory.

INTRODUCTION

In order to demarcate the case, namely schools and teachers in postcolonial Kenya, Chapter 3 outlines developments in the Kenyan education sector, as well as education disparities and axes of difference that can be identified from the literature. It includes findings of previous empirical research on diversity in education in Kenya, identifies the research gap and discusses the methodological and ethical implications for this study.

The findings from the interviews with the teachers concerning the configurations, representations and encounters of diversity in the Kenyan postcolonial education context are presented in Chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 4 focuses on the research participants diversity experiences growing up and going to school; Chapter 5 presents their diversity experiences and practices as professional teachers. The categories that emerged from the data as significant axes of difference and social categorisations (including the ways in which they have affected the teachers’ lives, education and teaching) are described using examples of the different types of diversity encounters.

Chapter 6 comprises the construction of contextualised theory from the categories found in the data in relation to the theoretical lens of the study. To develop the theoretical model, I used the coding paradigm suggested by grounded theory scholars Strauss and Corbin (1998), which provides a structure for putting the central findings in relation to each other. The theoretical model developed to answer my research question includes e context factors and how they affect the schools and teachers in terms of diversity (these offer insights into the configurations of diversity in the Kenyan school context);

e causal factors or drivers for the question of how diversity is experienced by teachers in schools (these offer insights into the representations of diversity in the Kenyan school context);

e intervening conditions (conceptualised as the teachers’ biographies) and strategies with regard to diversity, including their consequences (these offer insights into the encounters of diversity).

The final chapter, Chapter 7, synthesises the results and the study’s contributions to the related debates. It draws conclusions about the potential implications of diversity in education in a more general sense. It also highlights recommendations derived from the findings — and signals new avenues for future research.

CHAPTER TWO Diversity in Education

In recent years, the theorising of multiple forms of social difference under the term diversity has also become of interest to the field of education research because it enables specific angles for recognising, looking at and deconstructing inequality and disadvantage. Yet, thinking about difference in educational settings, and especially in schools, is not new. Existing theoretical avenues that draw on current debates mainly in the United States, South Africa and Euorpe help to better understand and analyse the biographically and professionally related diversity perceptions, experiences and professional practices of Kenyan teachers. In European countries, the notion of diversity in education has been mainly of interest from migration-centred and anti-racist perspectives. I will include some of these debates exemplary from Germany because they provide relevant deconstructionist perspectives for this book.’

Diversity: What kind of difference?

Diversity has a long tradition in various disciplines and subject fields: genetic diversity, workplace diversity, biological diversity, human diversity, cultural diversity and many other diversities have been subjects of study. Hence, Walgenbach (2017) talks of diversity as a travelling concept between disciplines and regions, lately gaining influence in education sciences outside the Anglo-

American language area. The various discourses, concepts, policies and strategies referring to diversity illustrate the current popularity of the term in various political, social, educational, scientific and private business arenas:

While it can [be] argued whether or not the present is actually characterized by more social difference than earlier periods, one thing is for sure: the current period is pervaded with discourses about diversity. (Vertovec 2012: 287)

Vertovec (2014) ascribes the immense interest in diversity partly to the success of identity-based political and public campaigns such as, for example, women’s, African American, anti-apartheid, LGBTIQ, disability-based and other movements around the world. Similarly, Czollek et al. (2009) state that the notion of diversity as generated in scientific and philosophical concepts, as well as in political and social movements in the US and elsewhere in the 1960s, is closely linked to the struggle for the recognition and participation of marginalised social groups. It is therefore inherently connected to questions of social (in)equality (Banks 2015; Czollek et al. 2009).

The basic definition of diversity, found in the Merriam Webster dictionary, is:

The condition of having or being composed of differing elements, e.g. the inclusion of different types of people (such as people of different races or cultures) in a group or organization.’

Diversity as variety, multiplicity of difference, dissimilitude or unlikeness in a sociological framing focuses on social and cultural diversity and, hence, on collective identities as opposed to genetic aspects of difference (Haring-Smith 2012).

A significant body of literature on diversity in education refers to international debates on inclusion, the right to quality education for all and special needs education (Ainscow et al. 2019). According to Hauenschild et al. (2013), diversity represents a discourse about social differences and broaches the issue of adequate political, educational, economic and legal responses to pluralistic societies (Hauenschild et al. 2013). In this sense, diversity refers to individual and group characteristics, which are partly innate, partly individually acquired and partly effective through laws and institutional practice like class, sex, nationality, religion, (dis)ability or age. Leiprecht (2017) points out that diversity has partly substituted terms like heterogeneity, which in the binary construction of homogeneity/heterogeneity turned out to be problematic in public discourse because heterogeneity has been mostly regarded as not ‘normal’ but a problem. Unlike heterogeneity, diversity generally has a positive connotation, and the fact that it does not have a negative antonym allows for a wide range of interpretations (Leiprecht 2017; Vertovec 2014) — which may be another explanation for its recent popularity in various disciplines. This also suggests a general difficulty to understand diversity analytically and study it empirically given inherent normativity. Riegel (2012) points out that (socially constructed) differences in a society become significant through their social implications because they mark symbolic boundaries and structure the society in a hierarchical manner. So, what is the main focus of studies looking at social diversity?

Diversity studies: Moving in ambivalent spaces

In his Handbook for Diversity Studies, Vertovec explains this as the study of modes of social differentiation: how categories of difference are constructed, manifested, utilized, internalized, socially reproduced — and what kind of social, political and other implications and consequences they produce. (2014: 10)

Questions around modes of social differentiation investigate, for example, categorisations, social inequality, in-group/out-group, self-ascription and ascription by others, group and category, symbolic and social boundaries, identity and intersectionality (Vertovec 2014). The empirical and theoretical work that diversity studies builds on refers to concepts such as race, gender, sexuality and subjects like discrimination, social inequality, status distinctions and social movements. However, Vertovec (2014) highlights that challenges arise when academics attempt to probe diversity analytically and critically whilst, at the same time, the term is used normatively or instrumentally in the public — often without clear content or overall direction. Further, diversity in the social sciences does not come with an elaborated and broadly shared theoretical framework — which holds true for educational sciences as well.

Cooper (2004) identifies a number of theoretical dilemmas and challenges with diversity that emerge at the intersection of values, collective identity and social structure. One of these is the identification of criteria that determine whether particular forms of social treatment and practice can be considered a social relation analogous to gender or class, and whether bias, prejudice or discrimination is sufficient evidence for this social relationship. Cooper (2004) argues that, in the framework of equality, it is too broad to merely look at a group’s experience of oppression given that any group that experiences oppression or discrimination — even if the group’s choices, identities or preferences are perceived as socially harmful — could present themselves as disadvantaged and call for an end to oppression. Hence, Cooper (2004) advocates differentiation between specific constituencies in terms of inequality on analytical and normative levels. ‘This would include recognition of the relationship to dominant constituencies and discourses of normalisation (Cooper 2004). Concern for multiple forms of inequalities rooted in recognition of multiple forms of social difference needs to be negotiated in democratic societies relative to the question: “Which differences should be supported (because they challenge social relations of inequality and domination) and which should not?’ (Fraser 1997). Cooper (2004) argues for a more structural approach to looking at differences by evaluating the mainstream, the common and normal as institutionalised, systemic processes through which differences arise — instead of putting groups, their practices and identities at the centre of study.

In a more general sense, Vertovec points to the opportunities of the concept of diversity, stating that it can help scholars think about modes of difference, their differentiated qualities, the processes that surround them and the ways that they are negotiated in social practice. (Vertovec 2014: 6)

Research into diversity is confronted with a number of questions and ambiguities, namely, diversity’s boundaries and values — which and how many differences to look at, and which to neglect, and how to distinguish between differences that should be encouraged and those to be discouraged. This accompanies the question of whether to include or exclude a normative basis and, thus, delegitimise certain forms of difference. Research into diversity and diversity concepts also moves in an ambivalent space where group identities, social categorisations and differentiations are utilised and reproduced through defining, and often naturalising or essentialising, differences. What seems imperative in conceptualising diversity research is to ask ourselves how the wider normative context of the struggles for equality and diversity, power relations and normativity should be included (Cooper 2004; Leiprecht 2017; Vertovec 2014).

Like most authors, Thomas Faist (2014) discerns a difference between diversity as a management technique in organisations, and diversity that raises questions of social inequality in the sense of power struggles along the boundaries of, for example, gender, class, ethnicity, religion and age. Understanding diversity in the latter sense allows for tracing the mechanisms through which diversities or differences turn into social inequalities (Faist 2014).

Mecheril and Tifberger (2013) note that scientific interest in diversity refers to the empirical and theoretical analysis of social categorisations regarding identities and group affiliations and their interplay. Understanding the diversity of differences as constitutive of social realities and institutional contexts, the concept of diversity enables the incorporation of gender, ethnic, cultural, generational (etc.) regimes in its concern (Mecheril and Tifberger 2013).

Group-centred or deconstructionist?

Approaches that seek to understand diversity in the context of the (re)production of social inequalities and power relations can be distinguished as group-centred or deconstructionist approaches (Cooper 2004). Minorities’ attempts to secure equality of participation and power commonly centre on their shared group identity. These emancipatory and transformatory approaches to diversity originating from the group-centred approach are opposed by system-centred or deconstructionist concepts of diversity that reject group recognition as the basis for their politics. They argue that emphasis on group identities and politics based on group recognition valorises false commonalities within, and creates rigid boundaries between, collectives — which ultimately limits, and does not encourage, diversity (Cooper 2004; Squires 2006). Another challenge that Cooper (2004) identifies concerning the group-centred approach encompasses that of minority groups using the language of group rights to promote disagreeable and reactionary forms of difference, for example, right-wing forces that make their entitlement claims; she also censures that group-centred approaches promote the assumption that groups are homogeneous and discrete. Hence, critique of group centredness — and taking subjective group perception of oppression and discrimination as grounds for accepting group demands as legitimate — has been expressed on the grounds that it becomes almost impossible to distinguish between radical and reactionary articulations of diversity. In this context, concerns have been raised for diversity theorists to critically reflect on the normative basis and on power asymmetries for theorising diversity (Cooper 2004).

To avoid some of these challenges, deconstructionist or system-centred approaches to diversity pursue the elimination of social classifications altogether. This again raises the question of how deconstructing systemic factors and interrogating social structures can help to identify and address social inequalities and their effects. Focusing on social dynamics, which produce the organising principles of inequality, means to neglect the perspectives group-centred. approaches offer in terms of the analysis of social inequalities and political representation, as well as the perspectives for transformation and greater equality. Cooper (2004) points to the limitations of both — the group-centred and system-centred approach — and proposes a social dynamic approach to inequality that focuses on individuals rather than groups, and where certain divisions emerge as organising principles of inequality to frame the study of diversity. By doing so, she shifts the focus from issues of group recognition to the organising principles of power, and to processes that prohibit equal participation and equip individuals with different capacities to shape the social and physical world around them. Hence, the interplay of values, collective identity and social structures, as well as their individual representation and reflection, are the focus of this approach (Cooper 2004).

Similarly, Fraser (1997) has argued that, in order to judge the value of different differences, we need to interrogate their relationship to inequality and social justice. She also points out that claims for social justice have increasingly divided themselves into two types: the first type seeks a more just distribution of resources (e.g. between the North and the South, the rich and the poor); the second type refers to the politics of recognition:

Here the goal, in its most plausible form, is a difference-friendly world, where assimilation to majority or dominant cultural norms is no longer the price of equal respect ... This type of claim has recently attracted the interest of political philosophers, moreover, some of whom are seeking to develop a new paradigm of justice that puts recognition at its centre. (Fraser 2009: 72)

According to Fraser, claims for redistribution and recognition are rarely conceptualised together — which she attributes to the tendency to decouple cultural politics of difference from the social politics of equality. This, she argues, is not adequate because conceptualising justice today needs both recognition and redistribution (Fraser 2009). Combining recognition/representation and redistribution when looking at social justice and diversity is particularly relevant for this case study, which looks at the Kenyan context (see Chapter 3).

Another group-centred approach to investigating diversity in the context of social inequality refers to the construction of status:

A mere difference between people becomes a status difference when status beliefs develop that associate greater social esteem and competence with people in one category than with those from another and these beliefs become widely disseminated throughout a population. (Ridgeway et al. 2009: 44)

‘The status construction theory formulated by Cecilia Ridgeway (2018), building on former works on status and status construction, focuses on the development of shared beliefs about social differences that lay the basis for unequal treatment. If these beliefs, biases and prejudices based on gender, skin colour or ethnicity towards groups and individuals are widely shared, they become a status difference and consequential for social inequality (Ridgeway 2018). However, questions on how groups themselves, and the biases and prejudices attached to them, are constructed in the context of a wider notion of power relations are not the focus of status construction theory.

Thomas Faist suggests focusing on the categorisations of heterogeneities and on the social mechanisms that link the initial condition (heterogeneity or diversity) and the effect (inequalities):

Examples of social mechanisms significant for the (re-)production of inequalities are — in addition to boundary making — exclusion, opportunity-hoarding, exploitation and hierarchization while inclusion, redistribution, de-hierarchization and ‘catching up’ constitute mechanisms which can further equality between categories of persons and groups. (Faist 2014: 266)

With these different perspectives and ambiguities in mind, Vertovec (2014) suggests a framework for researching diversity employing a deconstructionist approach that encompasses e configurations of diversity — all structural and external conditions including policies, laws, geography that ‘enable or constrain peoples’ opportunities for action and social or physical mobility (Vertovec 2014: 15);

e representations of diversity — understood as social concepts, categories, discourses, hegemonic narratives that stem from and reflect power relations in a society; and