2025-2029 | VUB
Ethnoracial inequality in secondary education remains a serious problem in Europe. Despite many initiatives to promote fairness and inclusion, racialized students often face barriers that harm their learning and well-being. These inequalities do not only affect individuals, but also reinforce broader social and economic gaps over time. Research has revealed many causes of these inequalities, such as language barriers, teacher expectations, and school policies. However, most studies overlook a key factor: the role of whiteness and racism in shaping education systems. While countries like the U.S. and U.K. have strong traditions of studying racism and whiteness in education, such approaches remain rare in continental Europe, where talking about race is often avoided. This project aims to fill that gap by exploring how racism and whiteness operate within European education. It will do so by comparing multiple levels—from global and national systems to schools and individuals—and by using new critical quantitative methods (QuantCrit and CritQuant). The goal is to make visible the hidden ways that racism and whiteness sustain educational inequality, providing insights that can help build fairer and more inclusive education systems.
