Inuit Mobilty and Education

This research project aims to study the conditions of admission and academic success of Greenlandic students in migratory situations, mainly through qualitative research. Focusing on the conditions of their mobility (about the way people change location as part of their studies and about its impacts), the study will rely on a two-fold methodology: participant observation field-notes on the one hand, analysis of a corpus of interviews on the other.

To identify how the double process of subjectivation and emancipation at work in education related mobility, we will investigate the journeys and experiences of Greenlanders who have moved to Copenhagen to study. As keys to better appreciate their stories, special attention will be given to a historical situation of colonial domination that still pervades Greenlandic society, where race and culture are central issues, as well as to the global context in which such mobility takes place today – commodification of higher education in relation with the rise of the “economy of knowledge” and a high variability of migrants’ social inclusion according to their country of origin. We will examine how students resist norms foreign to them, open spaces for their own fulfilment, rely on social and political networks to support their educational trajectories. Hence, this research will draw a social geography of access to a University diploma for minority groups that are such both in their own country and in the academic world.

Fieldwork will be conducted both in Copenhagen, where Greenlanders come to study, and in Nuuk (Greenland), where they depart from and return to. To put this study into perspective, a secondary and minor research will consider the Canadian Inuit situation. Mainly based on an analysis of already available quantitative data, it will also include a limited case study based on in-depths interviews with those who choose to study at Whitehorse Yukon College.