Medical students navigating space and power during South Africa's #FeesMustFall protests (2015-2016)

Abstract

Health professions trainees increasingly mobilize against social injustice within educational institutions, yet little is known about how they navigate the spatial and power dynamics embedded in these environments during collective action. During the #FeesMustFall protests, medical students occupied complex and sometimes contradictory positions as they confronted inequities within both the university and the broader sociopolitical landscape. This study examines how medical students negotiated multiple forms of space, power, and belonging during the protests. We conducted a secondary analysis of interview data collected in 2020 from medical students who participated in #FeesMustFall. Excerpts related to experiences of space were identified and categorized across physical, emotional, and symbolic dimensions. Analysis was guided by Gaventa’s power cube, which conceptualizes power across spaces (closed, invited, claimed), levels (local, national, global), and forms (visible, hidden, invisible). Our findings extend Gaventa’s framework by identifying three additional dimensions: spaces of intersectionality, a psychological level of power, and processes of critical conscientization. Participation in the protests represented a transformative moment in which students challenged deeply embedded hierarchies in medical training and South African society. Students shifted from exclusion within closed institutional spaces to actively claiming space through physical occupation and the symbolic renaming of buildings. Conscientization facilitated this shift, enabling students to recognize and challenge the invisible power that had previously normalized inequitable structures. The protests also exposed the profound challenges experienced by students of color, women, and queer students, who navigated belonging within patriarchal and racially competitive environments that often-reproduced silencing within clinical and academic spaces. These expanded dimensions underscore how spatial and psychological dynamics shape trainees’ experiences of belonging. Health professions educators must engage with these dynamics and better support trainees positioned within liminal and marginalized spaces.