Class Dismissed

On completing a doctorate as a first generation academic at a prestigious (expensive, foreign) institution

I am a first generation academic. As I officially take on the mantle of Dr. Hunter, I think it’s worth unpacking what that means in terms of identity, class, and community—from my specific context. Class can be an uncomfortable thing to talk about and isn’t openly addressed in academia, despite other (important) areas of underprivilege having become recognized disciplines of their own: Crip or Disability studies, Indigenous studies, Women’s studies, Black studies, etc. Perhaps this is because ‘class,’ as a socioeconomic category, intersects everything including those areas mentioned above: race/ visible melanin, different needs and abilities, gender spectrum/ sexual orientation, etc., so it is deeply nuanced. It becomes especially difficult to speak critically about class while fighting to insert yourself into the privileged (and privileging) structure of a prestigious academic institution/ tradition. I’ll come back to this, to discuss how ‘belonging’ to such a structure quietly reinforces the erasure of one’s existing class identity towards a homogenized form of privilege and what some of the impacts of that might be.¹

The rite of passage mug and mug shot after submitting the PhD thesis, December 2023.

I’m the first person in my entire lineage to complete (or even attempt) a PhD, let alone the pre-requisite degrees.² Not a bragging right, but academia is not baked in for me, not supported by my inter-familial social norms. In my immediate family, I’m the only one to graduate from high school in the prescribed linear manner.³ I originate from the long-standing economically depressed region of Atlantic Canada and from a province with an illiteracy rate of 40%.⁴ My family on both sides have mostly been goods and services producers, a normal, expected trajectory in a province that is predominantly rural. One branch is comprised of farmers and truckers (transporting the products of farmers) who have lived in the same county for generations. The other side were blue collar workers, or non-workers due to disability and social disorders related to class-based intergenerational trauma. Neurodivergence and neurobiological disadvantages have been significant factors on one side of my family, including high-needs autism and schizophrenia. It is well documented that social class impacts educational attainment for such compounded reasons,⁵ and for me to speak openly of these things in my own close family history invites stigma. How I position myself in the academic world has thus been tricky—how much of myself can I be?

I came late to the academic game, or rather was stunted in my educational attainment due to class disadvantages and thus finished later in life after much struggle and perseverance. While I can mask as someone coming from greater class privilege when necessary, under cover of the normative ‘pretty privilege’ and white privileges I have, things still slip out—such as a tendency to swear prolifically in a distinct Maritime lilt, sounding a little like a pirate and not at all like a Go8 graduate.⁶

…first-generation graduate students not only continue to struggle with the same issues that they grappled with during their undergraduate studies… [but] those struggles are amplified in graduate school settings -- where linguistic style, embodied habits and dress, and social connections become even more important to success.

Excerpted from “The Hidden Challenges for Successful First-Generation Ph.D.s” by Bailey B. Smolarek: https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2019/10/09/first-generation-phd-student-describes-her-struggles-opinion

There is also the significant fact that at 51, I have a son approaching 30, living his best adult life overseas after being raised by a single mother. Having children very young was seen as ‘natural’ in my family: my grandmother was 16 when she had her first child (my father, born in a logging camp), and I was born to a 19 year-old mother. This now socially disparaged ‘teen pregnancy’ status came from class-based decision-making, either to orchestrate familial dynamics around labour continuity and hands-on skills transfer, or in marrying very young to try to create a more advantageous home life—both practical reasons deemed more important than what is often perceived as languid philosophizing. As a result of these circumstances, I stand apart from academic peers who were advantaged by the experiences of their academic parents, or who more quickly pursued higher education instead of focusing on meeting challenging domestic needs. The intersecting circumstances that relate to class are certainly more complex than I can fully articulate in one post, but for me, marrying young and having a child seemed a reasonable course of action at the time. Thirty years later, as Dr. Hunter, I also now stand apart from a significant portion of family who don’t relate to my lofty lexicon nor to my choice to pursue ideas for a living (though I do it in a decidedly hands-on, technically skilled manner). Some don’t understand the scope of what comprises ‘research’ at all. But, I digress.

The upper echelons of academia, specifically PhD programs, seem structured to secure elitism at the institutional, regional, and national levels. Systemic structural obstacles, in addition to administrative apathy prevent many ‘outsider’ graduate students from finishing their degrees. It’s a tough process for anyone but international students (such as I was) are particularly at risk, as visas and immigration policies are directly linked to class.⁷ Not only are countries with lower global economic status discriminated against at the federal level⁸ but things like currency exchange, housing scarcity and competition (disadvantaged by lack of rental history in a new country), and distance from social support networks dramatically impact foreign doctoral candidates. There are no sufficient safety nets in place for these challenges. For example, I was prevented from returning to campus in Western Australia for two years during my candidature because of border closures during the pandemic. When I was finally able to resume my studies, my visa was quickly approaching its expiry date. In order to apply for a visa extension, I needed the cooperation of the university administration and it was not at all forthcoming, putting me into crisis. Being foreign in this context automatically positions a person as an additional administrative burden, particularly when administrative staff have been cut back—you’re more to deal with because you have greater systemic requirements, something often exacerbated by class: not only was I faced with the imminent existential threat of having to leave the country and forfeit my PhD,⁹ but at the same time, due to my extended candidature, there was an administrative glitch with the expiry date of my scholarships and I was erroneously charged for a semester of tuition at the exorbitant international rate. This was eventually reversed, but not without having experienced serious distress since again my capacity to finish my PhD was threatened: I wasn’t privileged enough to have access to an extra $30K to pay off the lump sum. These are two of numerous examples I could provide from my own experiences, as someone breaching her class boundaries to fight for accreditation at an institution that prides itself for producing the ‘cream of the crop’ (yes, that irony is intended).

“This should matter to the academy not only because we want graduate school to be more supportive and inclusive, but also because the people studying for their Ph.D.s today are the same people who will be teaching the first-generation students, students of color and nontraditional students of the future. Discussions of access, equity and support for such populations must also include a discussion of who is teaching them.”

Excerpted from “The Hidden Challenges for Successful First-Generation Ph.D.s” by Bailey B. Smolarek: https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2019/10/09/first-generation-phd-student-describes-her-struggles-opinion

As I alluded to earlier, the social consequences of breaching one’s class privilege include alienation from friends and family who didn’t go along on the ‘polishing school’ journey with you.¹⁰ In my region of origin, there is pride of place often accompanied by a defiant adherence to class norms as a cultural standard, and mistrust of anyone who steps outside of them—the ‘crab bucket’ phenomenon.¹¹ When one no longer fits within the class standard, common ground falls away and what is left is a void between newly acquired privileges and the cracked earthenware pot of a family tree you somehow outgrew with your ‘book learning.’ A first generation academic exists in a culturally liminal space, both defined by and untethered from class origin. To speak of coming from a ‘lesser’ class origin (this hierarchy really needs to fucking die), particularly in a Westernized context, is to deeply offend on one end, and be politely ostracized on the other.

What does this all mean for securing an academic position post-PhD? Most prescient is the short-sighted move in privileged countries such as Australia and Canada to restrict opportunities for international students after they secure a degree (again, this restriction is deeply influenced by class differences).¹² Also, do institutions of higher learning consider “first generation academic” as a category in their aggregate statistical data for the purposes of diversity and inclusion practices? Oftentimes, the requisite box ticking is merely performative bureaucracy. Canadian institutions make a very big deal of diversity and inclusion practices, yet class still gets systematically dismissed, or subsumed by some of its more compartmentalized nuances (creating more boxes to tick). Knowledge and representation is lost around the fact that some of these reductive ‘boxes’ are deeply interlinked with and complexified by class circumstances.¹³

I could wax poetic about what I know to be redeeming qualities of early motherhood, extended educational attainment, etc., but what I want to impart here is that as institutions aspire to contribute towards more equitable futures, they should better consider first generation academics for unique strengths they bring. For example, resourcefulness has necessarily played big into my research directions and ethos overall, including emphasizing DIY and DIT (do-it-together) approaches, self-publishing/ alternative publishing and workshopping (beginning with my craft education at a small community college in the late 90s/early 2000s). Community building and resource sharing is an important part of this. Also, relying on my own body materials throughout the entire trajectory of my art career, as a form of material resiliency and fluency. Similarly, drawing from the above to establish spaces where unconventional processes and materials can be explored. These approaches are all the rage at present, particularly in reckoning with our current global polycrisis created from cultures of excess; alternative approaches are what I’ve honed from my circumstances for the past 20 years. These are now reinforced by my doctoral thesis work, but I have been doing this for a long time by scrapping together whatever I could over a prolonged period. It’s a knowledge matrix of deeply lived experience and philosophy, the likes of which I’m sure many first generation academics can claim, and it is becoming an ever-more transferrable currency.¹⁴ Class challenges now need to be properly recognized and valued by institutions for the different abilities they engender and imbue researchers with. As I move forward on my own academic career path, this will be a topic that I push much harder.

1. One example, similar to my own is encapsulated in the following anecdote: "Throughout graduate school, I paid close attention to the ways my peers talked, dressed and moved, and then I tried my best to do the same. I wasn’t only learning about Bourdieu’s theory of capital -- I was living it. My hard work has paid off, as I’m now often mistaken for someone I’m not. Just recently a community partner I work with assumed I was a wealthy trust-fund kid. He was shocked when I told him I was first generation… Forcing first-generation students to change their cultural sensibilities and ways of being in order to belong not only does a disservice to them but also to the entire academy.” Excerpted from “The Hidden Challenges for Successful First-Generation Ph.D.s” by Bailey B. Smolarek: https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2019/10/09/first-generation-phd-student-describes-her-struggles-opinion

2. I do have a great-aunt who completed a nursing degree. I have other ancestors who gained educational training and ranking through the military.

3. I want to point out here that these family members went on to meet impressive goals in life, including respectable careers/jobs and property acquisition—however, in the latter case, these were facilitated by more privileged individuals with academic backgrounds.

4. https://globalnews.ca/news/9283571/nb-child-literacy-rates/

5. For more, see Soria, K. M., & Stebleton, M. J. (2012). First-generation students’ academic engagement and retention. Teaching in Higher Education, 17(6), 673–685. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2012.666735. See also Stebleton, Michael; Soria, Krista. (2013). Breaking down barriers: Academic obstacles of first-generation students at research universities. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/150031.

6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_of_Eight_(Australian_universities)

7. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/there-are-new-restrictions-for-student-visas-in-australia-heres-what-you-need-to-know/s6l7xynyi

8. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/may/05/australia-international-students-visa-university

9. Thankfully, this didn’t happen because one of my (amazing) supervisors slammed her fist on an administrator’s desk, so to speak.

10. Also known as ‘finishing school’ which, “focuses on teaching young women social graces and upper-class cultural rites as a preparation for entry into society.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finishing_school

11. Read more here if you haven’t heard of this expression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality

12. For more, see https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/immigration-minister-says-upcoming-changes-to-permanent-resident-levels-not-cosmetic-but-significant-1.7015113 and https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c23lee2z7zyo

13. I haven’t even touched upon the sexist ageism that surrounds finishing a PhD later in life because of class limitations (and early motherhood).

14. I am TRULY inspired by those whom I’ve found who are doing similar things, often even better, whilst navigating class/ socioeconomic circumstances (particularly those from the Global South). Looking at you, GynePunk and Mary Maggic.