Institutional Barriers to Educational Participation: Examples from China and India.

Drawing primarily from Pierre Bourdieu's work on "field" and "capital," this article examines in detail how institutional barriers have systematically denied access to quality education to lower-class/caste students, which results in educational inequality impeding the efforts of sustainable development. China's hukou (household registration system) and India's varna vyavastha (caste system) are used as examples to illustrate how oblivious institutional barriers could manifest and exhibit in similar ways in two distinct sociopolitical nations. The article concludes with making a case for deconstructing the discourses on education for sustainable development based on the principles of social justice and equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]