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Chair: Jana Tschurenev (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)Panelists:Yusuf Sayed (Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town)Céline Teney (Universität Bremen)Martha Zapata Galindo* (Freie Universität Berlin)Regions outside Europe are often attested a higher level of social heterogeneity and inequality on various axes. But even in Western Europe, social change and processes of migration have generated a greater degree of social diversity during the last decades. Which interdependencies, if any, can be traced between social heterogeneity and ideas/systems of education? In which contexts has education facilitated the empowerment of marginalized subjects and groups? How do students from different social backgrounds make use of educational opportunities? What role do habitus and practices of assessment within the educational institutions play? What influence do gender and class inequalities or other factors of social discrimination have on the accessibility of (higher) education? What experience do we have with affirmative action and quotas? When does education become a cause of social mobilization? Do the poor receive a different form of education?Yusuf Sayed: “Equity and Social Cohesion in Post-Apartheid South African Education”After the end of the Apartheid regime in South Africa, the deracialization of education provisions and the opening of schools, equality in education spending and affirmative action promised a new start in education policies. Today, however, former racial segregation has in many cases been replaced by a class-based division in the education system. While students coming from wealthy families have access to semi-private public schools, the poor are stuck in public schools that cannot provide the same quality of education. Sayed takes a closer look at this division by reviewing education policy in South Africa since 1994.Céline Teney: “Ethnic Inequalities in the Education System in Northwestern Europe”After the Second World War, many so-called "guestworkers" came to northwestern European countries and stayed there. Today, their families, second and third generation immigrants, make up a substantial part of the population. While they have been growing up in the same society, they do not have the same opportunities when it comes to education and the labor market as those without an immigration background. Teney highlights the inequalities in education which children of former "guestworkers" are facing and discusses some of the possible causes.Martha Zapata Galindo: “Policies to Promote Social Inclusion and Equality in Higher Education Institutions in Latin America”Martha Zapata Galindo was replaced by Rocío Ramírez Rodríguez, who read her paper. The talk focused on Latin America, where social inclusion, equality and diversity programs have not always been a priority in higher education, causing various types of inequalities to persist. In recent years, though, universities have started to pay more attention to these issues by introducing a number of measures, including scholarships for students from low-income families and models that promote the inclusion of Afro-descendants and indigenous people. Still, as Zapata Galindo points out, these policies are not without flaws. Questioning the way diversity studies and social-inclusion policy makers have conceptualized diversity, she proposes a different approach and introduces the results of a research project that analyzed access to universities in Latin America from an intersectional perspective.Discussion