Decolonizing refugee education research: a political economy of knowledge production

• In Event: Power and (in)coherence: political economy analyses of education systems in conflict and crisis

Proposal

The landscape of knowledge production within the forced migration domain bears historical imprints of colonial legacies (Malkki 1996; Donini 2010; Palladino and Woolley 2018). Recent inquiry into the burgeoning field of refugee education reveals a pronounced schism between the global north and south, reminiscent of colonizer-colonized dynamics (Kassis, 2022). Despite a few exceptions (Dryden-Peterson 2022, Hammoud et al. 2022, Ramsey and Baker 2019), research endeavours have often been segregated across these hemispheres, without fostering cross-dialogue between these global hemispheres. Employing a political economy framework, the paper analyses facets such as power dynamics, economic interests, ideological influences, access to knowledge, and global imbalances that perpetuate the North-South divide in forced migration research and specifically focusing on research on education for refugees. Leveraging the SCOPUS database, our analysis examines articles published on education for refugees in the past twenty years, encompassing over 500 English and 90 Arabic peer-reviewed contributions. Articles are categorized based on our delineated criteria and facets for the political economy. Initial findings underscore a prevailing pattern wherein studies are chiefly authored by scholars from the global North, although conducted research predominantly unfolds in the global South, scant in co-citations with Southern scholars—mimicking an extractive knowledge production model. Access to knowledge compound the problem, with many studies eluding the reach of global South scholars. A concentration on micro and meso levels is evident, while macro-level inquiries are limited. This is accompanied by a general lack of theoretical exploration within the field. Evidently, the colonial legacies of forced migration studies reverberate through the very knowledge they generate, perpetuating a cycle of inequitable representation and production dynamics. In conclusion, the paper discusses what consequences the insights from our analysis and a political economy approach might have for current calls for decolonising refugee education research.

Authors

• Maha shuayb, Centre for Lebanese Studies

• Cathrine Brun, Centre for Lebanese Studies