Exclusive inclusion: How international organizations frame policies of migrant and refugee education

• In Event: Researching global education policy: Diverse approaches to policy movement

Proposal

Incorporating migrants and refugees (M&R)* into national economies and societies requires adaptation on both sides (migrant and refugees and host states and societies). This, of course, also holds for domestic education systems. Making the national education system accessible for the social groups of migrants and refugees is the keystone for national integration policy efforts. On the one hand, the degree of accessibility and support mechanisms varies depending on national economic capacities, political atmosphere, and historical developments. On the other hand, education is a fundamental human right that nearly all states pledged to respect. This normative dimension also makes it an international issue, and multiple stakeholders in the global arena contribute to the discourse on M&R education. Most prominently, international organizations (IOs) are decisive actors since they set global standards regarding norms for educating M&R. They provide analyses and policy recommendations for (member) states that influence decision-making and policy reforms.

In our paper, we analyze how IOs frame the topic of migrant/refugee education over time. In doing so, we are interested in observing diffusion and convergence of policy ideas. Specifically, we ask if certain ideas about M&R education move back and forth among IOs, if certain frames became more dominant at certain times, and if we can identify certain clusters of IOs depending on their view of M&R education. After this rather descriptive part, we will then turn to an explanation for the observed political movements (or inertia). In this context, we will draw on the theoretical frameworks of Sociological Institutionalism (SI) and Historical Institutionalism (HI) to assess why IO policies have changed or remained stable. We thus consider policy movement as a phenomenon itself and simultaneously analyze the de facto outcomes of this specific policy movement.
We hypothesize that due to mechanisms of World Culture/Society (SI), positions of IO converge over time, but due to path dependencies and institutional inertia (HI), we still can identify (and explain) striking differences between different types of IOs on M&R education policies.

Methodologically, we utilize qualitative and quantitative approaches in analyzing the policy ideas of IOs in their policy documents. We apply structural topic models to extract the basic issues IOs dealing with. Our sample comprises 30 IOs that are active in the field of education. These IOs vary in their aims and in the sets of countries their cover or address. Some IOs focus on all countries in the world, on developed/industrialized countries, on developing countries in the Global South, or on particular regions or cultural spheres. We thus expect differences in topic prevalence between IOs as well as differences over time.

*We are aware that both groups, migrants and refugees, are different entities with different characteristics and needs, but for the analytical focus of this paper it makes sense to combine both into one category.

Authors

• Dennis N. Niemann, University of Bremen

• Kerstin Martens, University of Bremen