Understanding Education of first-generation Afghan Refugee using the Capability Aspiration Approach

• In Event: Contesting borders and centering learners: Global migration across four continents

Proposal

The sharp increase in refugees from Afghanistan to India over the past two decades has resulted in many unexplored and unimagined nuances. Education of the children of refugees has been one such nuance that needs detailed investigation. The problem becomes even more pronounced when first-generation learners are involved with no social capital at home to assist with enrolment or continuation of education. There have been a few interventions at the school level to ensure education for all, for example, state intervention guaranteed through the Constitution of India, Sustainable Development Goals, etc. However, higher education has been largely ignored in the context of refugee students. The higher education of these refugees ensures a gateway to a better life. Not only does it increase the probability of attaining employment, thereby ensuring one’s economic stability, it also helps one in gaining insights for active community engagement. Moreover, without adequate state provision, enrolment and completion of higher education generally become one of the major struggles for refugee students in a transit nation. The challenge at the formative stage lies in understanding the educational struggles and equity of young Afghan refugees, particularly in neoliberal times, when competition and free movement have led to derived and nuanced passion for the betterment of life.
Due to preconceived notions, lack of a policy framework, and lack of awareness, the voices of this segment of society frequently go unheard. This in one way can be projected and amplified by first bringing it into the domain of academic discussion and then further recognizing it as a future issue persistently developing to be addressed on the policy platform. Analyzing various aspects of the issues faced by Afghan refugees can help educational institutions, educators, and policymakers understand what factors are important in improving educational attainment for Afghan refugee students in developing countries. Further, it can also help identify gaps and challenges to social justice, equity, and inclusion in today’s educational contexts. The study can empower academics, thinkers, and policymakers to delve deeper into educational improvement, which includes a powerful approach and a dynamic process for advancing education that examines reality and uncertainty and addresses problems.
In this context, Hein de Haas’s distinction between negative and positive liberty explores how access to economic, social, cultural, and bodily resources shapes the abilities, preferences, and aspirations associated with migration. He has used this model to understand the phenomenon of migration; the present paper uses this model’s ‘negative and positive liberty’ perspective to understand the experience of refugees. This theory explains that the capabilities approach allows us to think of human mobility (people's freedom to choose where to live) as a wellbeing-enhancing capability in and of itself ('migration as freedom'). To gain a better understanding of how these individual migration capabilities and aspirations are shaped by and interact with macro-structural processes, it is useful to apply Isaiah Berlin's distinction between positive and negative liberties to the study of migration. In summary, negative liberty refers to the absence of obstacles, barriers, or constraints. This is similar to popular conceptions of freedom, which often focus on the role of governments in limiting people's freedom or even being an outright threat to people's lives, such as through regulations, oppression, violence, or war. Positive liberty is defined as the ability to control one's life and achieve one's fundamental goals.
There are numerous ways in which structurally determined positive and negative liberties affect life aspirations and capabilities, and how these may affect mobility freedoms and people's migration decisions. Negative liberty influences people’s aspirations and capabilities. The interaction of these factors explains complex and sometimes contradictory migration outcomes. People may aspire to escape poverty, distress, and danger, but they still require certain 'positive liberties' (capabilities) in the form of resources, such as money, social support, and education. Through this paper, it is assumed that the ‘positive liberties’ is higher education and ‘negative liberties’ are considered as overcoming barriers in order to be capable of aspiring to higher education is being reflected upon. Therefore, this study examines the experiences of first-generation Afghan refugee students enrolled in higher education in Delhi, India.
To explore this issue, a study was conducted with first-generation refugee students from Afghanistan in Delhi. Fifteen first-generation Afghan refugee students enrolled in higher education in Delhi were surveyed through semi-structured in-depth interviews. Since there is no comprehensive database on the number of refugee students in different higher education institutions, it is difficult to estimate the exact number of students enrolled. Therefore, the snowball sampling method was resorted to. The current study examined published literature sources and conducted interviews (telephone and face-to-face).
No such study has been conducted to understand the nuances of refugees’ higher education perspectives through the lens of the aspiration capability approach. We learn from this study that the twin concepts of negative and positive liberties serve as a useful conceptual link between the structural conditions of higher education that shape liberties on the one hand and people's individual aspirations and capabilities on the other. Also, the absence of external constraint (negative liberty) is not a sufficient condition for people to exercise migratory agency, because they require a certain level of 'positive liberty' to enjoy genuine mobility freedom - which implies a genuine choice about where to live
First-generation young Afghan refugees pursuing higher education in Delhi have unexplored adaptation and assimilation nuances, considering their prior educational experiences. The current study was able to comprehend a few experiences, such as language serving as the main barrier, along with other difficulties encountered when transitioning from Afghanistan to India’s educational system. The major factor contributing to their misery is their lack of ability to pay for higher education, and this research paper explores and discusses additional factors of this nature. The focus of the paper has been on analyzing all the aspects of the findings in the light of aspiration capability’s negative and positive liberty.

Author

• Anushka Tiwari, National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi, India