Book review: Bhopal, K. and Myers, M. (2025) Race, racism and higher education: ethnic minority students’ transitions to and from university. London: Routledge.

Race, racism and higher education (HE) offers an accessible and critical exploration of issues relating to race, elitism, and whiteness that are found in universities in the UK.Central to the book's empirical analysis is a beautiful articulation of the ugly and destructive impact of racism through the voices of students.The book is underpinned by a framework drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's capital theory, which Bhopal and Myers use to explore how privilege and inequality are reproduced in HE.Yet while Bourdieu's framework helps illuminate class-based privilege, it is less effective in capturing the lived realities of racism.Many of the racialised experiences described by Bhopal and Myers would be more effectively illuminated through Critical Race Theory (CRT) and cultural community capital, particularly the work of Tara Yosso (2005), whose concept of community cultural wealth gives us a more nuanced understanding of racially minoritised students' strengths.The book itself offers some indication that 'Bourdieu is perhaps less adept at understanding how racism functions and how it is particularly understood by BME (Black and Minority Ethnic) individuals who are themselves experiencing racism ' (p.142).Indeed, the book would benefit from a central intersectional framing that integrates class, gender/sex, and race, offering a richer understanding of how these unique sites of inequality interact within HE as told through the racialised experiences of students with intersecting characteristics.