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This article explores the academic identities of college educators of higher education in vocational institutions. Qualitative semi-structured interviews generated data from eleven educators in five vocational education institutions. Discourse analysis revealed that educators distinguished their vocational institutions' contributions to HE as different, but equal or superior to those of universities. Educators presented their culture and practices in advantageous ways, contrasted against imagined stereotypes of university experiences, which are perceived to be deficient for supporting the types of students they teach. In adopting academic identities that distinguish their cultures and practices from those presumed prevalent in universities, these educators seek parity of esteem with universities through distinctiveness, and reject research-focused academic identities and academic drift. In embracing teacherly identities supporting students rather than the research-teaching nexus, educators may be contributing to the 'therapeutic turn', diminishing opportunities for students, and furthering the vertical stratification of institutions within the Australian HE space.

Recent studies in Australia have found that bachelor's degree participation in vocational institutions in Australia tends to skew towards students from high and middle socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. This outcome runs counter to overall vocational participation which is dominated by students from low and middle SES backgrounds. This paper uses data from the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) to confirm findings from a mixed-methods study on bachelor courses in vocational institutions by school leaver-aged students. It characterises the student population in such courses and examines evidence on the influence of determinants of bachelor participation in vocational institutions, in relation to measures of family background, wealth and cultural status and school type. It is found that students entering bachelor programs in vocational education have higher household levels of cultural possession, are more likely to plan to enter university, and have higher self-assessments of academic ability than those undertaking traditional vocational qualification pathways, but lower than those who undertook bachelor qualifications at university.

Transnational migration, especially the growth of forced migration is unsettling the literature on widening access to university education. Equity definitions and understandings that frame social inclusion have presumed stable domestic populations within nations and targeted redressing historic internal social inequalities. Refugees and people seeking asylum have high aspirations to access to university education to gain recognition or update qualifications. University access for refugees and people seeking asylum is hampered by restricted funding entitlements that privilege citizens and admissions criteria that position them in the international student market and favour language and cultural requirements that reflect the dominant national culture. A qualitative narrative-based case-study of the admissions practices in one university in Australia explored the opportunities and blockages experienced by those seeking access and the dilemmas recognised by the admissions' gatekeepers. Employing organisational theory and Scott's three pillars of a neo-institutional framework, the regulative, the normative and the cultural-cognitive pillars, the article argues that homogenised institutional policies and practices to assess applications construct norms of access and equity, which create new exclusions for forced migrants. In revealing how some gatekeepers sought to 'workaround' these practices of exclusion, the article provides hope that informal learning within organisations can lead to organisational change.

Current social and political arrangements of higher education are inequitable for students from asylum-seeking backgrounds. In many countries, their access to university is limited and if they are accepted, their status as forced migrants puts them at multiple disadvantages. This inequity is in contrast with the universal aim of higher education institutions to serve all people and their societies. Utilising a voice centred relational method (VCRM) and the theoretical lens of Aaron Antonovsky's salutogenesis, this article is a poetic presentation of the experiences of asylum-seeking students in Australian universities. We show that higher education can provide asylum-seeking students with the means for safety (making life manageable), belonging (making life comprehensible), and success (making life meaningful). Thus, we argue that higher education institutions have the potential to help facilitate students' sense of coherence, which in salutogenetic terms refers to their ability to comprehend their own situation, and the capacity to use the resources available. However, asylum-seeking status poses barriers in achieving this, and this inequity should be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global migration is increasing to unprecedented levels, especially from non-OECD countries to OECD countries. One of the new challenges for lifelong learning is that migrants are expected to be responsible for ensuring that they have the capabilities and learning to adapt to new contexts but qualifications and experiences obtained in one national system are often not recognised in different national systems. This article draws on an empirical study from Australia to show how adults' informal learning can support skilled migrants' career adaptability and employment. The findings from this qualitative research show how migrants' participation in social networks and learning communities, through both paid and voluntary work, are integral to learning to manage their self and lead to transformation learning and settlement. But learning to adapt to new contexts is emotional as well as cognitive work. When migrants hold multiple identities, transformation learning has negative sides. These findings reveal the hidden injuries of migration and a continuing need for adult educators to support informal learning in workplaces and communities to encourage culturally diverse groups to learn to live and work together.

This article explores the issue of social mobility in relation to the recent expansion of higher vocational education (HIVE) by non-university providers. The post-school vocational education sector has become the object of policies to widen access to higher education to ensure greater social mobility and provide second chance education to those who do not complete initial education in Anglophone countries. Drawing on typologies of vocational education and training systems, the article generates understanding of the expansion of HIVE within two Anglophone countries (Australia and England). The article considers the implications for widening opportunities to higher education for non-traditional students from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds in these two contexts. Descriptive analysis of current national data on participation reveals surprising differences between countries. The article concludes by discussing the extent to which the higher education offerings in vocational institutions can contribute to social mobility within these two countries.

This article argues that to better investigate the enduring relationship between social class background and inequalities in post-compulsory education necessitates a more comprehensive approach to thinking with Bourdieu, but also a need to move beyond his seminal, much used concepts. Through meta-analysis, we review how Bourdieusian theory has been used in widening participation research in mainly Anglophone contexts, and consider how including concepts from his wider "toolbox" can aid this pursuit. We consider new theories and concepts that have emerged largely after Bourdieu and their appropriateness for research in Australian higher education. We explore how a "practice-based" theory of widening participation might be developed, drawing on the work of Schatzki and Kemmis which permits researchers to usefully consider the internal goods of a practice and the role of institutions and the non-human. We also suggest that incorporating intersectionality, as both a social theory of knowledge and an approach to analysis, facilitates exploration of routine practices and struggles and reveals the complexities, provisionality and becomingness of social positioning, subjectivities and change. Such theoretical extensions to Bourdieu's legacy enable more nuanced understandings of how complex and intersecting social inequalities in higher education are realised or challenged in countries beyond the global north.

Vocational Education and Training (VET) in a policy and institutional sense plays an important role in the migration experiences of people who settle in Australia. This article draws on qualitative empirical work using narrative accounts from VET practitioners along with a cross section of ethnically diverse migrants to reveal how race and ethnicity are central to and constitutive of the experiences of both humanitarian and skilled migrants in Australian VET. The article employs critical race theory (CRT) building on research developed by others in the Journal of VET to analyse these experiences and the role of VET and labour markets in this process of (dis)placing migrants' skills. The article argues firstly, that skilled migrants are not absent in VET, but are rather rendered invisible in a policy sense. Secondly, CRT provides a theoretical resource for coming to grips with how, in a marketised Australian VET context where institutional responses to skilled migration can either be beneficial or exploitative, practices privilege advantaged groups and are always at once culturally loaded.

This article analyses qualitative narratives from skilled migrants using Bourdieu's concepts of misrecognition, symbolic and social capital to understand the uneven effects of migration transitions on employment outcomes among migrant groups. Transnational skilled migration is increasing to unprecedented levels, especially from non-OECD countries to OECD countries, where inward migration is a strategy to increase the skill level of workforces. Drawing on a qualitative case study of skilled migration to a regional non-metropolitan area of Australia, the article discusses the key finding that "It's who you know, not what you know" which enabled both skilled migrants and their partners to secure employment commensurate with their qualifications and previous employment histories. Building the 'right' social networks post-migration were the gateways to securing employment. A "regime of skills" was used by employers, employment agencies and educational providers who acted as gatekeepers to employment opening up opportunities for some or closing down that for others through processes of misrecognition of the migrants' experiences and skills and the prioritising of localised knowledge and native-like English accents. Through this process of misrecognition, the "doxa" of who should be employed and in what capacity was sustained.

There is increasingly scholarship on gender and migration, yet the international migration of highly skilled women is still somewhat under-researched. This article focuses on this neglected area in the context of Australia's discretionary inward migration policies to solve skills shortages. The article draws on empirical research using a qualitative case-study approach with in-depth narrative interviews to explore understandings of the experience of highly skilled female secondary migrants. The findings resonate with a growing body of work in North America, Europe and the UK. Applying a gendered and intersectional analysis to the case of Australia with its complex mix of skilled migrants from predominantly English speaking countries, as well as many countries in the Asia-Pacific region and Africa, reveals a more nuanced understanding of the temporality and gendered and racialised ways in which the processes of career disruption, deskilling, intensification of domestic responsibilities and re-feminisation of health and human service work play out through tensions between migration and education policies.