Disrupting Structural Inequalities of Higher Education Opportunity: “Grit”, Resilience and Capabilities at a South African University

Abstract

Given the extent of inequalities of higher education opportunities in many contexts, this paper investigates how students from marginalized backgrounds make it to university, gaining access “against the odds”. While it is becoming increasingly common to draw on notions of individualized responsibility, such as the construct of “grit”, to explain persistence in challenging situations, this paper argues that individualized understandings are insufficient to take account of the interaction between individual agency and social contexts from which the capability for educational resilience emerges. The argument is theoretically grounded in the capabilities approach, and empirically on narrative interviews with South African first year students from marginalized backgrounds. The paper identifies three internal capabilities that underpin resilient responses of students, and shows how these internal capabilities are influenced, positively and negatively, by conversion factors at the levels of family, school and community.