Document analysis
Education on hold: Addressing barriers to learning among refugee children and youth from Ukraine—Challenges and recommendations
The education of children both within and outside Ukraine has been disrupted for several years. Hundreds of thousands had already been internally displaced since 2014 as a result of the conflict in the eastern regions and Crimea, while the COVID-19 pandemic brought periods of extended school closures, a pivot to online learning and other major disruptions. Since the start of…
2023
Back to school 2023-2024: Report on Education for children displaced by the conflict in Ukraine at the start of the second school year. September 2023
Humanitarian organizations are actively engaged in delivering educational support to children displaced in Ukraine and host countries by the conflict. As Ukraine and host country governments strive to deliver education to all children, it must be recognized that: • humanitarian organizations play a critical role in ensuring that displaced, vulnerable children receive education and psycho-social support integral to their development.…
2023
Considerations for preparatory education for asylum-seekers and refugees in Iceland
UNHCR’s Representation for the Nordic and Baltic Countries has submitted considerations for setting up preparatory education for asylum-seekers and refugees in Iceland. The UNHCR Global Education Strategy 2030 highlights the educational challenges faced by refugee children, with many not attending primary or secondary school, leading to negative impacts on their future careers and livelihoods. In Iceland, a surge in arrivals…
2023
“(Maybe) I am going to school-age educare because now I have a residence permit”: Children’s non-access to school-age educare in a Swedish asylum context
Sweden’s school-age educare has been identified as important for children’s access to play and meaningful leisure. However, research has not addressed asylum-seeking children’s access to school-age educare or its potential role in asylum contexts. This article draws on data from a 1-year ethnographic fieldwork with children in a Swedish asylum context and explores asylum-seeking children’s perspectives and experiences in a…
2024
Learning to navigate ‘unsettlement’: Young refugees’ (re-)engagement with post-15 education in Greece
This qualitative study provides an ethnographic exploration of the experiences of young refugees (aged 15-25) in Greece as they engage with education, amid and despite their uncertain and precarious conditions – here theorised as (manufactured) conditions of ‘unsettlement’. Instead of focusing only on their deficits – as in much refugee education research – it asks: How do young refugees in…
2023
Education policy and refugees in England and Germany: Racist nativism and the reproduction of white supremacy
This paper argues that education policy in England and Germany racialises young refugees and asylum seekers and contributes to upholding white supremacy in the education system. Previous research in both countries has shown that education policy reproduces race inequality, and in England, it has been argued that education policy itself is an act of white supremacy. However, to date there…
2023
Obstacles to the labour market integration of highly skilled refugees in Sweden
After the peak of the refugee “crisis,” host countries are now focusing on the long-term integration of refugees. This is also the case in Sweden, which took in the largest number of asylum seekers per capita of all European countries in 2015. The recent increase in refugees has renewed attention to the need for effective integration initiatives that foster an…
2023
Young refugees’ participation in post-compulsory education: Mapping policies, challenges and ways forward in mainland Greece
Little is known about young refugees’ post-compulsory educational trajectories in Greece, despite high numbers of teenagers continuing to arrive and integration policies being implemented. While access to education has been increasing since 2015, enrolment and attendance rates for 15- to 18-year-olds remain low and drop-out rates are high. Based on findings from a doctoral study, this chapter explores the macro-level…
2023
Integration policy – State’s failure, local authorities’ success: Preparatory classes for the integration of migrant and refugee children1
Poland after the collapse of the Soviet Union turned from a primarily emigration state to mainly an immigration one. The profound influx of migrants did not result in an effective nationwide integration policy for integration. Migration and integration governance can be defined as a set of legislation and regulatory measures, as well as practical actions developed and implemented by diverse…
2023
Depictions of refugees in children’s picturebooks in Turkey
The United Nations’ announcements of a rise in the number of refugees have led to questions on how refugees are portrayed in children’s picturebooks. Works that introduce children, at a young age, to the concept that there are other societies and cultures besides the one in which they currently reside have the potential to broaden their worldview and provide them with…
2023
The trauma of child war refugees from Ukraine in the context of education
This qualitative study aims to describe and analyze the stories of child refugees from Ukraine. We compare their situations with those of child refugees from previous conflicts in Europe to better understand the experiences, attitudes, and needs of child refugees. A total of 43 narratives of children and young people between the ages of 7 and 20 were analyzed. Most…
2023
Becoming adult on the move: Migration journeys, encounters and life transitions
This edited collection situates the migration of children and young people into Europe within a global framework of analysis and provides a holistic perspective that encompasses cultural media, ethnographic research and policy analysis. Drawing on a unique study of young unaccompanied migrants who subsequently became ‘adult’ within the UK and Italy, it examines their different trajectories and how they were…
2023
Building responsive education systems toward multiple disruptions in refugee education: Turkey and Germany as cases
Refugee students’1 education is disrupted by multiple spatial and temporal transitions – no matter where they come from, where they go, and what cause their forced migration. The first major disruption occurs with their flight from origin countries due to security or other reasons. The COVID-19 pandemic led to another dramatic disruption with a heightened risk of weakening hard-earned progress.…
2023
International and Macedonian legal treatment of the educational rights of refugees
This article aims to provide an overview of the legal framework protecting the right to education of refugees in North Macedonia. The right to education is one of the fundamental human rights guaranteed by many international legal instruments. International treaties are particularly strong on the universality of the right to education. In the first part of the paper, the authors…
2023
Teaching the Greek language in multicultural classrooms using English as a lingua franca: Teachers’ perceptions, attitudes, and practices
The present study examines teachers’ perceptions, attitudes, and practices regarding the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF) to teach Greek as a second language (L2) in multicultural classrooms in Greece, a largely underexplored area in the field of applied linguistics. The research was based on self-reports collected through questionnaires, written accounts, metaphor elicitation, and semi-structured interviews provided by…
2023
Policy and practice on inclusive higher education in the UK and Kenya: A theoretical framework and recommendations
This article presents a study that was undertaken as part of a collaborative project between a UK university and a university in Kenya. The study aimed to investigate policies and practices of Inclusion and Inclusive Education in the two universities. Here, we present how Inclusion and Inclusive Education are conceptualized in the two geographical contexts, and review literature on Inclusion,…
2023
Countering the deficit: A policy critique of the Syrian refugee education response in Turkey
Turkey hosts the largest number of refugees of any nation globally, and the influx of Syrian refugees has placed massive strain on the Turkish education system. In response, the Promoting Integration of Syrian Children to the Turkish Education System (PICTES) program was implemented to help strengthen the Turkish public-school system and increase education access for Syrian refugee students. This chapter…
2023
Beyond language: The complex positioning work by language teachers in an integration classroom
This article investigates the roles of language teachers in a language and integration programme in Denmark. The results show that the teachers' work goes beyond the role of language teacher per se. The teachers are shown to take on the role of integration workers, who, as part of the integration system, contri-bute to socializing the students into a marginalized position.…
2023
Community garden developed by refugees from Syria — A sanctuary and a space for learning and empowerment
Many refugees from Syria resettled in Denmark experience poor health, lack of social support, and loneliness. The refugee families’ complex social situation led to the development of a social and health-promoting project comprising a series of interventions. Purpose: The present intervention aimed to improve the families’ collaboration and empowerment through jointly developing a community garden using participatory action research. Findings…
2023
Human capital as a factor of socioeconomic development of the state: The main trends of the Slovak Republic
The development of human capital is a crucial factor in the socio-economic growth of a country. As a result of russia's armed aggression against Ukraine, European countries, in particular those bordering Ukraine (including the Slovak Republic), may experience changes in quantitative and qualitative demographic characteristics due to the increase in the number of refugees. Migration processes are only gaining momentum…
2023
Linguistic integration of adult migrants in Greece and Italy: Language requirements and learning opportunities in L2 Greek and L2 Italian
Migration has almost always been accompanied by language-related processes and concerns. Integration dimensions interact with numerous language-related issues, such as language requirements and learning opportunities, and the purpose of our paper is situated in the broader field of linguistic integration of adult refugees and migrants in Greece and Italy. Greece and Italy share a double role both as host and…
2023
Adult refugees and asylum seekers in university preparation programs: Competing identities and multiple transitions manifested in stigma consciousness and student self-identification
Preparation for university studies is key to enabling adult refugees and asylum seekers to reestablish their educational and professional careers in the host country. While refugees’ transition to higher education (HE) is embedded in multiple transitions regarding social position, educational career, and migration, related identities may compete. We investigate how this is manifested in stigma consciousness and precarious student self-identification…
2024
The social cohesion dilemma: Theoretical reflections on critical music pedagogy
Critical pedagogy has become a crucial element in managing post-migration societies, especially concerning the social cohesion dilemma that diversity creates. Through an ethnography of critical music pedagogy with refugee youth that emerged from an activist context in the city of Dresden, Germany, this article demonstrates what is at stake for empowerment. Music pedagogy that aspires to be critical remains a…
2024
Supporting the educational integration of young people seeking asylum and refuge: Examining good practices from Germany, Sweden and England
The educational integration of Newly Arrived Migrant and Refugee (NAMR) children and youth in a host country is complex. It requires educational systems responding to their diverse needs. Some of these needs are exacerbated by NAMR young people and their families’ limited understanding of the host country’s policies, structures, and procedures. Amidst these complexities, policy makers, practitioners, and other stakeholders…
2024
Understanding how classroom drama workshops can facilitate social capital for newly arrived migrant and refugee adolescents: Insights from Denmark
Art-based interventions, such as classroom drama workshops (CDWs), increasingly form part of a collection of mental health-promoting activities introduced in school settings. While research points to the potential benefits of CDWs for the mental well-being of refugee and migrant adolescents, the mechanisms to such improvement are less understood. In this article we respond to the need for qualitative evidence of…
2024
Assessing the criteria for equality of the right: Refugees’ higher education from the perspective of human rights [Hak Eşitliğine İlişkin Kriterlerin Değerlendirilmesi: İnsan Hakları Perspektifinden Mültecilerin Yükseköğrenimi]
With the Syrian refugee crisis, the subject of refugees’ access to HE, which was only partially funded owing to donor reluctance, was prominently covered in the news, with concepts such as preventing the lost generation, resilience, reconstructing countries, and education as a human right. With the Ukraine crisis, the issue of supporting the higher education of refugees came to the…
2023
Inclusive education for refugee children: Preservice social studies teachers and their critical thinking skills
The purpose of this study carried out with preservice social studies teachers in the final stage of transition to professional life was to investigate the sources they used for information about recent refugee mobility in Turkey, and their way of questioning the reliability of these sources. The study also analysed their views on the subject, within the context of critical…
2023
The role of institutional opportunity structures for refugee integration in Vienna. Learnings and modifications in the aftermath of the long summer of migration in 2015
Austria's exclusive model of citizenship, and restrictive policies on migration, refugee reception and asylum, dating back to the 1990s, create structural barriers to refugee integration in the country’s economic and socio-cultural life. In this article, we shed light on Vienna, a city renowned for its comprehensive social policies. However, the inclusive integration approach adopted by the city clashes with the…
2022
Post-migration ecology in educational leadership and policy for social justice: Welcoming refugee students in two distinct national contexts
Utilizing the post-migration ecological lens and the synthesized model of culturally relevant leadership formed by the authors, we aim to compare and analyze the policy outlines and school leadership responses to refugee education in Turkey and Germany; as the two main hosts of the largest number of refugees. Through comparative phenomenology, we draw on the semi-structured interviews, observations, and document…
2022
Extending organizational socialization theory: Empirical evidence from volunteer work for refugees in France and Australia
How are volunteers who provide assistance to refugees socialized into their organizations? Known as the process through which newcomers evolve from organizational outsiders into insiders, socialization is particularly crucial among volunteers, as they often help vulnerable groups such as refugees. To examine this issue, which is critical to both scholars and practitioners, we draw on a large-scale qualitative study conducted…
2022
Understanding the learning experiences of highly educated refugees from Iraq and Syria en route to economic integration in Luxembourg
This qualitative exploratory study sought to understand highly educated Iraqi and Syrian refugees’ perceptions of their learning experiences during economic integration in Luxembourg. This research sought to elucidate how these new migrants learned to integrate in a country with a long tradition of migration but little exposure to Arabic-speaking groups. Further, it sought to explore participants’ experiences of what knowledge,…
2022
Recognising refugees’ non-formally and informally acquired vocational skills for use in Germany’s labour market
The influx of asylum seekers into the European Union (EU) in 2015-2016 has turned the recognition of non-formal and informal learning (NFIL) into an integration priority and challenge. In EU terminology this process is called ‘validation’. Already in 2012, the Council of the EU had urged member states to create mechanisms for the validation of NFIL by no later than…
2020
Welcome and välkommen school administrators in the U.S. and Sweden responds to unexpected numbers of refugees in their rural communities
This exploratory, comparative study focuses on the leadership challenges encountered by American and Swedish school superintendents in communities that experienced an unexpected increase in the number of refugees being placed their towns. We focused the study on two small communities in northern Sweden and two communities in northern Vermont. Our study draws on social ecological systems theory to examine the…
2020
Higher education policy dynamics in turbulent times–access to higher education for refugees in Europe
Apart from teaching, research and service to society, since 2015 higher education systems and institutions in Europe have faced an additional expectation–to respond to the largely unexpected yet nevertheless growing demand for higher education by refugees. This study explores system and organizational level responses to such environmental pressures in Germany and Flanders, both affluent systems, but different in terms of…
2020
A word frequency study and refugee students in turkey [Bir sözcük sıklığı Çalışması ve türkiye’deki mülteci Öğrenciler]
Word frequency studies can be described as studies conducted to determine which words are used more frequently in written or verbal texts in a language. In this study, it was aimed to do a word frequency study on the 6th grade Turkish textbook for 2017. In this way, it was desired to determine word frequency for refugee students having education…
2019
Conceptualising educational provision for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in England
The right to education for all children, including asylum-seeking children, is enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, there is little research available to describe the educational provision provided to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) in England. Crucially, it is not known whether the educational needs are met by the provision available to UASC. In the…
2019
Possibilities for a liberating pedagogy: A critical exploration of an Icelandic course for asylum seekers
Second-language learning courses that are often offered to asylum seekers provide a unique opportunity for a pedagogy of critique to be implemented. However, there is essentially no existing research in Iceland, and very little internationally, that considers the practicality of implementing a pedagogy of critique within second-language classrooms for asylum seekers. Moreover, the experiences of teachers and students within these…
2019
Politics of refugee education: educational administration of the Syrian refugee crisis in Turkey
The main contention of this paper is that the interrelationship between ideology and policy shapes both the overall organisation of refugee education and the operational practices and procedures of staff working to provide education for refugees. Accordingly, this paper tries to answer how the education dimension of the Syrian refugee crisis is managed by the central education authorities in Turkey…
2018
Adult refugee learners in the Norwegian school system. An exercise in mental contortionism?
Are the aims of competence in Social Studies, LK06 applicable to adult refugee learners? This thesis aims to answer this research problem by investigating how different discourse perspectives interfere in the production of text in the classroom, and how connotations to topic relevant words affect academic achievement. Basil Bernstein’s theory on agent and structure offers the main theoretical framework of…
2017
University civic engagement in forced migration: A comparative case study on university support programs for migrants and asylum seekers in Norway and the UK
This study aims at to address the problem of understanding how the University of Oslo (UiO) and the Kings College of London (KCL) support refugees through their respective programs: the Academic Dugnad and Sanctuary. To do so, the first step was to structure a conceptual framework based on the idea that university civic engagement (UCE) can be conceptualized as a…
2017