We are looking forward to giving two papers at the European Sociological Association conference at the University of Manchester in August. The first paper is about the extent to which students see themselves, and are seen by others, as political actors. In it, we identify some commonalities across our six countries, but also some interesting differences by nation-state, higher education institution and subject of study. The paper is entitled ‘Constructing Youth As Political Actors: A Comparative Study Across Higher Educational Institutions In Europe’ and we’ll be presenting it in the Youth and Generation stream.
The second paper is called ‘Constructing The Spanish Higher Education Student: Evidence From A Six-Nation Comparative Study’ and we’ll be giving this in the Regional Network on Southern European Societies. In the paper, we tease out some of the ways in which students were conceptualised in Spain noting, amongst other things, a marked resistance to viewing students as consumers and some disagreement between policymakers, on the one hand, and students and staff, on the other, about the extent to which consumerist practices are evident in the Spanish higher education system.