Refugee Background Mature Students, with many having come from the global South to seek asylum, form a minority group in higher education. This qualitative study uses a Critical Race Theory framework to examine the lived experience of four Refugee Background Mature Students from Angola and Nigeria with a focus on microaggresions, the everyday occurrences of racism. On campus, their learning is informed by past experiences, asylum systems, including time spent in Direct Provision. Repeated microaggressions in Direct Provision silence or attempt to silence in the face of power. These students encounter the assaults of further microaggressions on campus, horizontally from peers and vertically from lecturers. These negative experiences occur in tandem with support from individual academics they meet during their degree courses. The unevenness of experience suggests that higher education institutions need to incorporate the specific needs of RBMSs across an institution to fully support diversity on campus.

DOI: 10.1080/13613324.2021.1890559
ISSN: 1361-3324