Beyond the Double-Edge: HMoob Feminist Refusal of Refugee Education

• In Event: Providing for Ourselves: Mutual Aid and Gift Economy Politics as Practice for Liberatory Education

Abstract

This paper offers an interdisciplinary examination of critical refugee education studies through feminist studies, ethnic studies, HMoob studies, and critical refugee studies. It imagines a world where we move away from deficit and damaging forms of advocacy and support in research, policy, and practice regarding displaced peoples, and instead focus on desire and assets as a way to seek support/resources by and for communities constructed as “refugee”. It outlines critical refugee education studies as capable of holding the double edged sword of refugee education: “indoctrinate us and future generations to be miseducated” and “recognize the potential that education offers”. Using HMoob feminist definitions of gift economies, this paper refuses to believe that there is not a better way to support communities beyond the framings of oppression. Beyond the double-edged sword, it considers how displaced communities might know how to educate “as we have always done” (Simpson, 2017), knowing that “education can’t save us [...] we have to save education” (Love, 2020).

Author

• Kaozong Nancy Mouavangsou, University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire