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By Julie Matthews and Quentin Maire

As humanitarian crises escalate, improving refugee education has never been more pressing

The question of how educators, teachers, activists, refugees and asylum seekers might assist and empower dispossessed populations around the world requires an understanding of educational practices and innovations. Many of these are initiated under dire and restrictive conditions. 

We assembled a global guide to refugee education. Why? To share key points of reference about what refugee education looks like in different locations. We wanted to show it can be done differently.

Education as right and vehicle of opportunity

The right to education is unevenly realised for children, young people and adults experiencing internal displacement and forced migration. A basic lack of access to primary, secondary and tertiary education remains an enduring challenge internationally. This is partly a consequence of policy failures to achieve universal access to education in low-income countries, where the majority of refugees and asylum seekers live. the comparative lack of educational opportunities for refugees and asylum seekers is a global problem. It often compounds personal and collective hardships associated with material deprivation, disrupted lives and trauma. These circumstances highlight the pressing need to improve educational opportunities for refugees around the world, supporting them to flourish as individuals, to build meaningful lives and relationships. Most importantly, to help refugees around the to create and contribute to generating forms of conviviality, community and social change.

A comprehensive and comparative outlook

Real improvement in refugee education requires direct engagement with students, teachers and communities experiencing forced migration. It is also crucial to have theoretically informed understandings of different refugee education contexts. To this end, A Modern Guide to Refugee Education showcases a broad range of case studies and comparative analyses.

Focusing on the global south, we examine refugee education in Jordan, Lebanon, the Sudans and Uganda. We also explore camp-based and mainstream educational settings. Subsequent chapters on refugee education in the global north address how refugees continue to experience exclusion, marginalisation and discrimination. The contributions challenge one-size-fits-all solutions. They also underline the diversity and complexity of refugee experiences and the varying national, cultural, and institutional frameworks that shape educational responses. The comparative perspective spans countries of temporary asylum and permanent resettlement. We offer a critical take on national and international refugee and educational policies. 

Education, justice and belonging

Conflict and displacement are common modes of existence for millions of people. This means that refugee education must be reimagined, not simply as a temporary stopgap, but as a durable commitment to justice and human dignity. A Modern Guide to Refugee Education illustrates how education is a theoretically informed practice able to cultivate new possibilities, new communities, new identities and new ways of belonging. As well, notions of  inclusion/exclusion, notions of autonomy, freedom, responsibility, anti-racism, aspirations, empowerment, skill formation, and well-being arise. Beyond their contrasted disciplinary anchoring, these ideas are raised to examine effective refugee education in various educational spheres including schools, communities, and refugee initiated systems.

Voice, representation and knowledge 

Much of the knowledge produced about refugee issues and refugee education comes from the global North. But 75 per cent of the world’s forcibly displaced people are in the global South. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees , the three major countries hosting the largest number of refugees on a per capita basis in 2023—alongside the smaller states of Aruba and Curaçao—were Lebanon, Montenegro and Jordan. This is why we have tried to detail key issues as well as accounts of educational practices undertaken in the global South by researchers, community organisers, volunteers, program leaders and educators who work with refugees in highly diverse settings. In these contexts, access to national systems is frequently limited and invariably relies on international support and humanitarian agencies. 

Fundamental economic disparities

The first section of the Handbook looks at issues in the global South and decry the paucity of research undertaken in these countries. Fundamental economic disparities leave refugee young people open to exploitation, trafficking, early marriage, and abuse. Accessible basic education and affordable post-secondary and higher education must be a priority. That’s longside providing ways of ensuring teacher retention and securing the motivation of refugee young people themselves. 

In the second section of the book, issues concerning the global North underline the point that student participation is impeded by systemic inequality and structural barriers. Those barriers include racism and the way the media and stereotypes inform education policy. Where access to local and mainstream schools is the norm, there are successful initiatives. These seek to better meet the needs of refugee-background students. These initiatives include school-wide anti-racist programs, targeted language support, activities helping schools to strengthen relationships with communities, and student-centered curriculum and pedagogies. These are implemented through advocacy for creating inclusion, a sense of belonging, building strong family–school networks, and educational approaches cognisant of the specific needs of refugee-background students.

Refugee education for a sustainable future

Initiatives undertaken by and for refugee students are as diverse as the situations from which they emerge. One study looks at utilising the African philosophy Ubuntu. That emphasises interconnectedness, as an anti-racist pedagogic approach for African refugees in Australia. The strategy involves storytelling, training for educators, safe learning environments, strong family–school relationships, and promoting community strengths and aspirations. Another study examines anti-racist restorative practices in the US. It assembles various progressive traditions and pedagogies to address the disciplinary over-targeting of refugee-background students. 

Innovations also include the development of ‘‘green skills’ initiatives for refugees in Hong Kong; and the development of a cluster learning model to provide early childhood education that involves training and financial support for refugee caregivers and accessible spaces used for play-based learning. The Social Innovation Academy in Uganda is another good example of a refugee-led model of engaged education. It is dedicated to stimulating ‘freesponsibility’, a combination of autonomy, freedom, and responsibility. The Dream Academy, developed by an organisation in Istanbul with established programmes throughout the global South, illustrates the importance of intersectional approaches. It supports lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersexual refugee youth. All these programs and initiatives highlight the critical importance of considering the diverse needs, values and aspirations of refugee learners and their communities.

Refugee education, compassion and humility

Refugee education must start with the desires, interests and hopes of refugees themselves in order to empower them to face an ontological condition of unknowable futures. It requires better links between individual and community goals as part of a broader reconsideration of traditional models of schooling. In this work, the idea that education is a linear process gives way to the view that those whose lives have been marked by disruptions and educational interruptions require lifelong opportunities and flexible options that build on strengths and capabilities more so than basic benchmarks of academic achievement. 

In this effort to reinvent education, practices of compassion take precedence over logics of personal advancement because they are better able to respond to the destruction and violence that cause forced displacement. Adopting a compassionate perspective requires humility and recognition of uncertainty about the future of education, work and societies. 

An act of compassion

Education as an act of compassion involves caring for learners’ immediate situations. It involves working together to create better conditions in and beyond schools, universities and training organisations. It involves empowering students to understand the current political, economic, historical, cultural, institutional and structural obstacles they encounter. The goal is to assist them to envisage, to challenge and to work towards social and political change. By insisting on the value of educational innovation amidst educational uncertainty, the book offers hope to respond to the multiplicity of forms of suffering and destruction.

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Julie Matthews is adjunct associate professor in the School of Education at Adelaide University, Australia. She is a sociologist of education. Her research focuses on refugees, education, anti-radicalisation, reconciliation, anti-racism, international education and education for sustainability. Her studies are informed by her experience as the daughter of a Japanese war bride raised in inner city UK. She’s on LinkedIn.

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Quentin Maire is a senior research fellow in the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne. He is a sociologist researching schooling, education and young people. He has a particular focus on social inequalities in school systems internationally. He published his first book, ‘Credential Market: Mass Schooling, Academic Power and the International Baccalaureate Diploma’ with Springer in 2021. He is on LinkedIn.

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A Modern Guide to Refugee Education: Comparative Perspectives and Innovative Practices. Edited by Julie Matthews and Quentin Maire.  Exploring international opportunities and challenges, this incisive Modern Guide provides an authoritative overview of refugee education. Expert authors reconsider dominant paradigms through a postcolonial lens, confronting national policy failures and highlighting avenues for innovation.

Header image: UNICEF Ethiopia Country Office Deputy Representative Shalini Bahuguna visit South Sudanese refugee camps” by UNICEF Ethiopia, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 The original image has been cropped.

This article was originally published on EduResearch Matters. Read the original article."AARE"