13 research outputs found
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Refugee education: Education for an unknowable future
Conflict and displacement are increasingly protracted, requiring rethinking of refugee education as a long-term endeavor, connected not only to the idea of return but to the on-going nature of exile. In this essay, I examine how refugees conceptualize education and its role in creating certainty and mending the disjunctures of their trajectories as refugees. Through a portrait of one refugee teacher, the essay explores technical, curricular, and relational dimensions of refugee education that assist refugee students in preparing for unknowable futures
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Refugee education in countries of first asylum: Breaking open the black box of pre-resettlement experiences
The number of refugees who have fled across international borders due to conflict and persecution is at the highest level in recorded history. The vast majority of these refugees find exile in low-income countries neighboring their countries of origin. The refugee children who are resettled to North America, Europe, and Australia arrive with previous educational experiences in these countries of first asylum. This article examines these pre-resettlement educational experiences of refugee children, which to date have constituted a “black box” in their post-resettlement education. Analysis is of data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), key informant interviews in 14 countries of first asylum, and ethnographic fieldwork and interviews in four countries. The article argues that contemporary conditions of conflict usefully inform conceptual understanding of refugee education globally, including the types of schools that refugees access in countries of first asylum and their rates of access. It further identifies three empirical themes that are common to the educational experiences of refugees in countries of first asylum: language barriers; teacher-centered pedagogy; and discrimination in school settings. The paper examines the theoretical and practical relevance of these pre-resettlement educational experiences for post-resettlement education of refugee children
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Refugee Education: The Crossroads of Globalization
In this article, I probe a question at the core of comparative education – how to
realize the right to education for all and ensure opportunities to use that education
for future participation in society. I do so thorough examination of refugee
education from World War II to the present, including analysis of an original
dataset of documents (n=214) and semi-structured interviews (n=208). The data
illuminate how refugee children are caught between the global promise of
universal human rights, the definition of citizenship rights within nation-states,
and the realization of these sets of rights in everyday practices. Conceptually, I
demonstrate the misalignment between normative aspirations, codes and
doctrines, and mechanisms of enforcement within nation-states, which curtail
refugees’ abilities to activate their rights to education, to work, and to participate
in society
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The Global Partnership for Education’s evolving support to fragile and conflict-affected states
In this study, we trace the history of policy development within the Global Partnership for Education to discern the drivers behind the uptake of its shifting policies relating to education in fragile and conflict-affected states. In order to elucidate how and why this international organization has altered its policy stance and funding modalities, we employ a process tracing analysis of document and interview data. Moreover, we provide three country case studies of Global Partnership for Education financing to Liberia,
Madagascar, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
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Tracing pathways to higher education for refugees: the role of virtual support networks and mobile phones for women in refugee camps
In this paper, we explore the role of online social networks in the cultivation of pathways to higher education for refugees, particularly for women. We compare supports garnered in local and offline settings to those accrued through online social networks and examine the differences between women and men. The paper draws on complementary original data sources, including an online survey of Somali Diaspora (n=248) and in-depth interviews (n=21) with Somali refugees who do or have lived in the Dadaab refugee camps of Kenya. We find an important interplay of local and global interactions, mediated by mobile technology, that participants identify as critical to their access to higher education. Our analysis relates these interactions to shifting social norms and possibilities for refugee women’s education. Our findings directly address the use of ICT in expanding opportunities for higher education for women in refugee camps
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Pathways toward Peace: Negotiating National Unity and Ethnic Diversity through Education in Botswana
This study examines how education can disrupt threats of conflict, specifically in the presence of
ethnic diversity. We present a historical analysis of Botswana, using methods of process tracing
drawing on documents, in-depth interviews, and Afrobarometer survey data. Post-independence
Botswana engaged in redistribution of educational access across ethnic groups and promotion of
common civic principles of social harmony. At the same time, it constructed through schools
ethnically-based national identity, which excluded many minorities. Lack of recognition for
ethnic minorities remains a persistent challenge, yet it exists in a context of high commitment to
unity and the nation-state, even among minority groups, which may have allowed recent dissent
to happen peacefully. The paper defines mechanisms by which educational redistribution and
recognition can disrupt resource-based and identity-based inequalities that often lead to conflict.
This model holds promise for conflict avoidance and mitigation in multiethnic states globally
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“There is still peace. There are no wars.”: Prioritizing unity over diversity in Botswana’s social studies policies and practices and the implications for positive peace
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Responses to cultural diversity in Botswana’s schools: links between national policy, school actions and students’ civic equality
This article examines nation-state policies that have prioritized toleration of diversity over recognition through comparative case studies of three junior secondary schools in Botswana. Through data collected in observations, focus groups, interviews, and Participatory Action Research, we demonstrate how the schools, which varied in the ethnic composition of their students, teachers, and surrounding communities, responded differently to the reality of their multicultural student bodies. Two followed national policies closely, while the third crafted school level policies adapted to its student population, yet tightly constricted by national policies and curriculum. In all three schools, students of ethnic minority backgrounds experienced varying degrees of shame, discrimination, and a sense of exclusion from the nation and found little recourse to discuss and address these experiences within the structures of their schools. We argue that schools could better develop students’ capacity for equal citizenship were they supported by national education policies and curriculum to recognize the cultural, historical, and linguistic diversity of Botswana’s ethnic minorities explicitly in schools
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Family–school relationships in immigrant children’s well-being: the intersection of demographics and school culture in the experiences of black African immigrants in the United States
This article explores the types of family-school relationships that promote academic, socioeconomic, and social and emotional well-being of black African immigrant children in the United States. The data are ethnographic, drawing on one year of participant observation and interviews at two elementary schools. The findings are also set within the context of an analysis of data from the New Immigrant Survey. The article identifies mechanisms by which relationships between black African immigrants and schools are created and argues that intersections between demographics and school culture are central, particularly as related to the possibilities for relational power, which can allow parents and school staff to transcend persistent inequalities of race and discrimination