Higher Education, “Race” and the Inclusive Society

It has become fashionable in both academic and policy discourse to suggest that the latter provides a way of explaining differential access to education, employment, housing, health and welfare facilities, and so on (Ratcliffe, 1999). External constraining factors, particularly institutional racism and individualised forms of discriminatory behaviour, are said to account for the fact that minorities fail to acquire their full citizenship rights. Sometimes, minorities have been seen as undermining their own interests by a process of self-exclusion.