Making a Difference? Conducting a study of the
experience of BME staff in English Higher
Education
Valerie Hey and Máiréad Dunne
28 June, 2016
The Focus of the Study
Experience of BME staff relating to:
Data and monitoring
Management practices
Relationships and support frameworks
Leadership and development opportunities
28 June, 2016
Design
Research and development
design
Survey all HEIs in England
Interviews with support framework
coordinators plus a range of middle
management staff in 10-12 HEIs
Fieldwork in 3
case study HEIs
Pilot initiatives in
3 case study
HEIs
28 June, 2016
Familiar Findings 1: Race – now you
see us now you don’t!
Phase 1 Survey = official voices (56% respondents noted existence of racism)
Ethnic monitoring data (EMD) examined workforce composition (95%);
recruitment (90%) & promotions (70%)
Phase 2 Interviews with senior staff complicated the procedural compliance of
Data and Monitoring requirements and noted ‘race’ was indeed a ‘sticky
subject’ - most non-declaration in respect to category of ethnicity
Phase 3 Interviews and FG with BME staff whether manual, academic or
professional, senior or junior, reported :
structured exclusion from knowledge, promotion and opportunities, whilst
paradoxically,
experiencing intense micro-management & hyper-surveillance.
28 June, 2016
Familiar Findings 2 Subsidiarity &
The Numbers Game
The power held at the ‘local’ i.e. department or work unit level means that good
policies depend on the good will of the manager and all too often are ignored or
countermanded.
Indigenous BME staff in contrast to international BME staff, often have few
peers to share inside information. This adds to the impression of managers
accruing even more discretionary power over rewards, workload and promotion.
Problems occur in the establishment of BME support networks, which can fail
to attract active participants; and with the implementation of staff recruitment
and promotion policies, often undermined by informal relationships and
information exchange.
The Burden of Representation.
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Doing a Double Take : The Messy Heart
of Reason & Research
Conflicted theoretical/political
commitments, interests & positions
between & with/in ‘stakeholders’
Race Forum – action as deeds – race
singularity - ideological /identity
ECU Policy – action as words –
neutral (?)
CHEER Critical Feminist
Deconstruction – Intersectionality
ideological /non-identity (!)
CHERI – mainstream policy advice
28 June, 2016
A Specific Power Geometry : A Contested
Triangulation of ‘Truth’
Stakeholders
Policy body
(ECU)
Race Forum
Speakability – i.e. the
regulation of who can say
what (about) ‘race’ ?
Writability – who can write
Researchers
(CHEER /
CHERI)
what about ‘race’ ?
28 June, 2016
‘Un/Speakability and the Affective 1:
The Dynamics of The Race Forum
Race as the dominant explanation for experience & discrimination.
Guarded debate but battle lines/tensions within - unions, professional
associations, activism – BME feminist
Some resistance & scepticism about academic discourse – authenticity
frequently trumped it – righteous anger has its own legitimacy
Research fatigue - Racism as so obvious reflected in a disregard for the
need for publicly verifiable evidence to support an anti-racist position.
Moreover,
Disbelief in the possibility that research evidence might change anything
or that research could undo the institutionalised nature of racism?
28 June, 2016
‘Un/Speakability and the Affective 2
Apprehension & Feminist Research/ers
Anticipation – excitement – energy
Prospects of :
the public articulation of the silence(d)
the reporting of the emotional life of organisations
an intersectional sociology of HE to add the flesh of
experience to the bones of structure
Apprehensions about:
access, empathy and exchange
developing trust & confidence but
Nevertheless collected :
Profound stories of experience, neglect, contestation
and resignation
28 June, 2016
Un/Speakability and the Affective
Race 3 – Respondents
Respondents resistance to identification as BME : fear of becoming
read as : dissident, trouble-maker, hyper-visibility already an issue –
and burden of representation
Preference for discourse of merit – even as evidence of exclusion
substantial
Recognition of intercutting differences – of age, gender and ethnicity,
faith. BUT
Weariness and wariness of doing BME in context of diversity or equality
issues (been here before!).
Editing Out : What Goes Missing
In/action?
Writing research – different iterations – dominant and subordinate
textual versions – data becomes ‘badged & branded’ in policy reasoning
The safety of a focus on policy architecture & structure away from race
as experience as a ‘sticky subject’
Sterile, sanitised and desiccated accounts – an absence of lived
experience of palpable inequities – preference for abstracted fact
Running a mile from painful, pernicious power of white supremacy
28 June, 2016
Inadmissible: evidence; academics;
theory and the politics of
mis/recognition ?
Race as explanatory was homogenised for political reasons – other social
realities and relations were deemed ‘offside’ even those named by BME
respondents.
Whiteness in research team was assumed as undermining claim for the
researchers’ authority or ability to secure and understand the data.
Cultural sociological explanations dismissed as useless – the experience of
BME staff therefore not seen as KEY - ACTION NOT WORDS
Writing it up – desiccated & dull
What stakes in ‘race’ and ‘white privilege’ are held in such an ecology of
researching differences?