To Be Who I Want to Be: Understanding Refugee Families’ Perspective of Education through the Human Capability Approach Lens

• In Event: Education in Complex Contexts: Refugee, Indigenous, and Marginalized Youth Experiences

Proposal

This paper explores how refugee families resettled in Canada conceptualize and value education, highlighting the central role it plays in their migration decisions, wellbeing, and future aspirations. Drawing on qualitative data from 18 refugee families collected through an innovative Researcher-in-Family (RIF) model, which engaged youth as research interns within their own families, this study finds that education emerged as a dominant theme in participants’ narratives. Framed through the Human Capability Approach (HCA), the analysis reveals that refugee families perceive education as both intrinsically valuable, linked to dignity, emotional fulfillment, and familial pride, and instrumentally vital for achieving autonomy, economic security, and societal integration. The findings critique existing global and national education policies that overwhelmingly prioritize primary education and fail to support refugees' equitable access to secondary and post-secondary opportunities. This paper calls for long-term, inclusive, family-centred education policies aligning with refugee families’ intergenerational aspirations. It concludes with policy recommendations to reframe refugee education as a strategic investment in social cohesion, national development, and refugee wellbeing.
Conceptual framing and contribution: Guided by the Human Capability Approach, the study treats education as both intrinsically valuable and instrumentally enabling (Sen, 1999; Nussbaum, 2000; Robeyns, 2006). Families’ narratives link education to dignity, pride, and recovery after displacement, and to employability, participation, and self-determination. The contribution is to show that aspirations for secondary and higher education are central to resettlement projects, especially for youth.
Methods: The project partnered with a community organization that convenes newcomer youth in the Waterloo Region of Ontario. Youth aged 12 to 21 were trained as “researchers in the family” and, with a research coach, facilitated collaborative family interviews, neighbourhood walks, mapmaking and drawing activities, and short mobility logs using handheld GPS units. Families chose their preferred language and setting, and interpretation was available. Twenty-two families consented, and 18 completed all activities. Families had roots in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iraq, Nicaragua, Somalia, and Syria. Audio, visual artifacts, and mobility traces were compiled, translated where needed, and thematically coded through an iterative team process. The design created multi-voice narratives that linked household histories, current schooling, and future plans. The approach brought youth into the research process in meaningful ways and centred the family as the analytic unit. Although the sample is not intended to be statistically representative, the design generated rich comparative cases across countries of origin, migration routes, and resettlement timelines.
Findings: Four themes organize the results in ways that speak directly to how families conceptualize and value education.
1. Education as a catalyst for migration. Parents described blocked access to education in origin and transit countries. Limits on secondary and higher study, documentation barriers, and exclusion from national systems featured prominently in decisions to seek resettlement.
2. Education, happiness, and privilege. Returning to school after interruption was described as a privilege and a source of daily pride. Families perceived children’s enrollment and progress as indicators of belonging and stability.
3. Education as a pathway to wellbeing. Youth articulated concrete goals and tied them to family sacrifice, positioning learning as the route to security and mobility. Parents framed education as the means for children to build an autonomous future.
4. Education at the heart of future intergenerational aspirations. Families presented education as a shared endeavour. Youth emphasized the freedom to decide who they can become and to contribute to both local and transnational communities.
Discussion and implications: The findings challenge policy tendencies that treat refugee education mainly as short-term humanitarian access at the primary level. Families in this study insist on sustained pathways through secondary and post-secondary education as central to wellbeing and autonomy. A capability lens clarifies why access alone is insufficient: what matters is progression, recognition of prior learning, and conditions that allow learners to pursue valued trajectories. Three shifts follow. First, guarantee real pathways into secondary and higher education, with attention to advising and affordability. Second, design supports that engage the family unit, including coordinated school–family–community planning and parent information in multiple languages. Third, evaluate integration not only by initial access or short-term scores but by whether families can convert educational access into durable capabilities such as persistence and meaningful credentials.
This study advances comparative and international education by centring refugee family perspectives and offering actionable implications for systems in resettlement contexts, aligning with CIES interests in equity and global education.

Authors

• Sohaila Isaqzai, Wilfird Laurier University

• Bree Akesson

• Karen Frensch, Wilfrid Laurier University