Racism in Education: Material and Cultural Segregation

Education is often presented as a space of equal opportunity — yet, historically, it

has also been one of the most enduring vehicles for reproducing inequality. This

panel explores how colonial legacies continue to shape the European school system,

influencing who has access to which types of education, and whose knowledge is

considered valuable.

Cristina Roldao (Portugal) brings a deep understanding of these structural dynamics.

A sociologist and one of Portugal’s foremost voices on race and education, her

research has traced how colonial hierarchies are mirrored in the postcolonial school

system, where vocational tracks often absorb racialised students while elite high

schools and universities remain disproportionately white. Her work challenges

educators to see how educational segregation is not an accident, but a continuation

of material and symbolic colonial divisions.

Valentina Migliarini (UK) extends this conversation through the lens of DisCrit – an

intersectional framework merging Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory. Her

scholarship explores how race and disability interact in school environments to

produce forms of “cultural segregation” that remain invisible in policy and pedagogy.

By situating race and disability together, she helps us reimagine inclusion not as

assimilation, but as the transformation of educational norms themselves.

Together, the speakers invite participants to reflect on how systems of

categorisation, streaming, and expectation — often presented as neutral — are in

fact deeply racialised and gendered, and to imagine forms of teaching that dismantle

these hierarchies rather than reproducing them.