What Well-Educated Means and Why I Wear This Label

Well well because I am well educated in a couple of senses of the word.

First of all I have a PhD in social sciences in a reputable university. Therefore I fulfill the statistical view of what is well-educated - see UNESCO ISCED Framework (2011).

But as many PhD holders would know, often having a PhD doesn't say much about your education.

Secondly, I am from a middle class where education was seen, at least back then, as one of the most important assets to keep your status and life on track.

Therefore all the values I was raised with developed around the idea of the importance of education.

Did I question these values? Yes, from an early stage of my educational life. Was it because I was a very reflexive and critical person back then when I was a kid or teenager? Not at all, but I was a horrible student with horrible grades and that early on created some distance towards the idea that being good at school makes you a better person.

But in any case, I know quite well how to find my way in these kinds of middle class / high social capital environments. I know how to present myself as a polite, well-educated, nice person in case it's necessary, be it meeting the family of my partners or meeting colleagues for the first time at university.

In other words, I am also perceived as well-educated within the common understanding of a well-educated person's behaviours and attitudes. And I have tested this in several different contexts over time, universities in different countries, different peer groups, right-wingers and left-wingers etc.

But again with time I realised that education is often used as a tool for domination and becomes by itself a symbol of status in a quite unfair and illogical way: I deserve more money, a bigger salary, because I am better educated. I am a deeper person because I know more about art history. I am better because I am highly educated.

Education is also a way more complicated phenomenon than that. Memorising art movements, knowing which fork you use for the dessert, dropping the right reference, none of it by itself makes you a better, more successful, deeper person than someone who can't.

And still, that understanding of well-educated, which I'm pretty much critical of, can be useful in some contexts, especially when you're an immigrant from a "less developed" country in a "well-developed" one, where most locals subconsciously believe they are better and come with stereotypes about your heimat that they reflect on you.

So when they perceive you as a well-educated immigrant, you become one of the good ones, the kind they're fine living with. That's of course part of the racist narrative, but:

a) Sometimes especially in state institutions and on job applications it really helps, and that's where I have to admit yes, it's wrong to take advantage of privileges like that, but I need to survive and I'm tired, and there should be some field in life where I make peace with my relationship to authority (something I learnt from my therapist).

b) It's also a good way to break the ice with a right-wing person and make them really listen to you, so at some point they get more honest and open about their views on immigrants, which makes it easier for me to challenge those views.

Kanaks are viewed, I've heard it enough times myself, as uneducated people, therefore well-educated kanak is a contradiction for the modernist/colonialist view. And I love contradictions.

But on the other hand, I also like the idea that as "a well-educated kanak" I translate the kanak/immigrant experience to those who think they are more modern, better educated and/or deeper than immigrants.

Now thinking about whom I am writing for.

Not sure, but I would like to be read

• by other immigrants, to see similarities and differences in their lives, to feel less lonely or to make more sense of what they are exposed to, if not already.
• by people who work and reflect on immigration-related issues, to evaluate their own work and thoughts based on what they find new and interesting in mine.
• (I would not lie) by academics as well, especially the ones I find important and enriching. Their appreciation would mean a lot.
• by my friends whose opinion I value on these subjects, to let them know what I am going through, what my thoughts are on all of this, and to know what they're thinking about what I wrote.

That's why I chose this title, I love the contradiction, well-educated and kanak in the same breath. I am well-educated in more than one sense, and seen as kanak in more situations than I'd like. And yes, a bit of provocation for the right-wingers doesn't hurt, if it also gets me the reader I'm actually writing for.

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