Education on the move: How migration status affects learning in the global South

• In Event: Learning for/in a risky planet: Consequences for children in highly unfavorable educational contexts

Proposal

Today’s unprecedented human mobility poses a serious challenge to quality education and learning across the world. Much of the “migration and education” policy debate is focused on flows of migration bound for the North. Yet, there is significant movement between and within countries in the Global South that requires attention if the UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 and others are to be reached.

Through an examination of South-South migration and education, we show how migration status shapes education provision and learning outcomes for different groups who are on the move. We target three groups in particular: migrants, refugees, and internally displaced, exploring the ways in which countries label and deal with these groups (e.g., many countries address refugees in the same way as they do economic migrants) and then discuss the implications for quality learning.
The paper draws on data from authors’ research in the Middle East as well as on the review of academic and practitioner literature. We offer country case studies that detail how education provisions differ for four groups (e.g., Lebanon, Turkey, Kenya, and Ecuador), and to the extent data is available, how the learning outcomes for these groups differ within each country.

Authors

• Jo Kelsey, INEE/UNESCO

• Ozen Guven, New York University

• Dana Burde, New York University