Making inclusion and diversity promotion a central strategy in universities

Ester Cois

;Eva Cendon

;Wieger Bakker

2024-01-01

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Abstract

This volume of the European Journal for University Lifelong Learning (EJULL) hosts a selection of papers that address, from different perspectives, the topic of the SMILE1 Symposium, organised by eucen with the project consortium, and followed by the 2023 eucen Autumn Seminar: How universities are (or should be) addressing diversity and inclusion? and which the role that lifelong learning (LLL) plays in this context. Are higher education institutions (HEIs), in particular, able to meet the challenges posed by an increasingly diverse world characterised by “shared inhabitance” (Ahmed, 2006, p. 3)? That is, a world of people with extremely diversified biographical paths based on their gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, ethnic heritage, migratory background, and cultural identity. Following Patricia Hill Collins' foundational statement on the paradigm of intersectionality, according to which “oppression cannot be reduced to one fundamental type, and that oppressions work together in producing injustice" (Collins, 2000, p. 18), there is a high risk that diversity is not understood as offering endless opportunities for learning and openness, but rather as a driver in the accumulation of inequalities.