Accessing quality education: local and global perspectives from refugees

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Quality education is a human right that must be guaranteed to all, as acknowledged in the 4th Sustainable Development Goal (United Nations 2015). Yet many countries have fallen short in providing one critical demographic, refugees, with access to quality education. This has impacted the approximately 26.6 million people worldwide who are designated as refugees, impeding their ability to integrate into host communities (USA for UNHCR). Facilitating humane integration requires local-led, context-specific solutions. This panel will share findings from a study conducted over the past year by a team of graduate students from a local university that addresses the challenges resettled refugees in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) have confronted while pursuing education.

Since the passage of the U.S. Refugee Act in 1980, the United States has admitted more than 3.1 million refugees (U.S. Department of State, 2021). Of those resettled in the U.S. in 2020 (the latest available data), 29.3% were of school age (U.S. Department of State, 2021). Over the past 40 years, many differing approaches have been taken to implement U.S. refugee policy, varying in promoting or impeding refugee inclusion and the pursuit of equitable access to and quality of education for admitted refugees. While current refugee and migration literature highlights the larger global increase in displacement, rising nationalism, and anti-migration (Roche, Streitwieser & Schwartz, 2021), the voices of recently arrived refugees are often absent. This is also true for research regarding refugees’ experiences with education – a challenge of particular concern given that literature outlines a variety of barriers refugees face regarding access to and quality of education. Centering refugee voices in literature and learning from their experiences can support more sustainable, effective, and long-term, equitable solutions. However, as this year’s conference theme states, refugees also face a myriad of factors that complicate progress towards educational equity, “including power disparity, income, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, language, ability, culture, religion, geo-politics, and neocolonialism.”

To explore these dynamics, we propose a CIES panel presentation that will bridge the 2023 CIES conference theme, “Improving Education for a More Equitable World,” with the stories of refugees in the DMV area. Our panel will highlight several chapters from an upcoming book publication, Accessing Quality Education: Local and Global Perspectives from Refugees, slated for publication in spring 2023. The book highlights qualitative interview data from refugees who arrived in the U.S. within the last 10 years and live in the DMV area, focusing on their educational experiences at various levels of education (pre-primary to tertiary). The chapters put these refugees’ discussion of their experiences navigating the U.S. education system, what challenges they faced, and what tools, people, or factors supported them in conversation with interviews with refugee scholars and practitioners who are working in the refugee resettlement and advocacy space. Overall, the book aims to provide a timely analysis of the current state of educational access and quality for refugees resettled in the U.S., while narrowing in on local approaches specific to the DMV area. The authors highlight barriers, successes, and ways to move forward as more refugees enter the U.S. (White House, 2021). In this panel, the presenters will focus on four book chapters and discuss the following topics: access to information and resources; inclusion in tertiary and adult/career and technical education; gender, sexuality, disability, and trauma responsive initiatives and best practices in schools; and asset-based approaches and assistance within and outside of schools.

Based on this year's conference “call to action,” our book and the proposed panel respond directly to the question, “What responsibilities, agendas, and solutions can properly address these alarming, coalescing challenges?” Given growing calls for academic literature to include and center refugee voices, our panel directly responds to the critiques amidst the context of increasing human displacement and rising nationalism. The book authors believe that interviewing refugees can lead to better research and policy recommendations with which to address the challenges refugees face in a context-specific manner, bridging the gap between research, policy experts, and lived experiences.

The data to be discussed in the panel consists of a triangulation of sources: a) an extensive document review of relevant forced migration literature from academic, gray literature, and reliable media sources; b) in-depth refugee interviews; and c) and interviews with academic experts on migration and practitioners who work on refugee resettlement and advocacy issues. Combined, these three data sources frame the experiences of refugees in the DMV area within the broader context of the work being done at the national and international level to improve refugees’ access to quality education in host countries. The authors bring a wealth of knowledge and professional experience working with refugee and migrant-background populations in the U.S. and abroad across a variety of educational settings and contexts.

This book and the sections highlighted in the proposed panel discussion target four distinct audiences: students, researchers, policy makers, and service providers. Preliminary interview data has highlighted various emerging themes including language barriers, limited provision of enrollment information to refugee families, and a lack of communication between stakeholders. The stories of individual refugee’s lived experiences stand to positively influence the development of successful programming and service provision aimed at these populations. The ultimate goal of our book is to reach all those who can make positive change in the lives of refugees merging research and practice.

All countries have a humanitarian obligation to recognize the common struggles and similarities they share in addressing migration crises and to draw upon refugee experiences to develop a welcoming response for migrants (International Rescue Committee 2020). From every country, locality, and region, we can derive lessons from and create opportunities for future collaboration with actors involved in responding to the refugee crisis. Doing so can come closer to ensuring that stakeholders attend to refugees’ educational challenges in a more systematic and holistic way, facilitating safer migration, better protection of human rights, and smoother local integration.

Sub Unit

• Global Migration SIG

Chair

• Samba Bah, Ohio University

Individual Presentations

• Equitable information and resource accessibility for refugee students - Olivia Claire Issa, Refugee Educational Assistance Laboratory; Alexander Erickson, George Washington University

• Refugee student inclusion in tertiary and adult/career and technical education - Caroline Natalie Rakus-Wojciechowski, The George Washington University; Savannah Smith, The George Washington University

• Inclusive education for students with refugee backgrounds: pre-k through secondary experiences and recommendations - Haley Skeens; Isabelle Evelyn Hoagland, George Washington University

• Asset-based approaches and assistance in refugee education - Ciara Catherine Hoyne, George Washington University

• Contextualizing the global: DMV perspectives on refugee education - Katharine Claire Summers, George Washington University; Jessica Marie Crist, The George Washington University; Bernhard T Streitwieser, George Washington University

Discussant

• Lisa Unangst, SUNY Empire State College