Refugee education: homogenized policy provisions and overlooked factors of disadvantage

ABSTRACT

For forcibly displaced people, high educational attainment is economically and socially empowering. Using experiences of African refugee youth in Australia as an empirical case and drawing on the capability approach to social justice, this paper aims to assess the substantiveness of education opportunities of refugees. Qualitative data were generated through policy review and semi-structured interviews. The analysis shows that not only are refugees invisible in equity policies, but educational inequality is also framed homogeneously as a lack of access. The restrictive framing disregards differences in people’s ability to convert resources into valuable outcomes. Specifically, the paper identifies four overlooked factors of educational inequality among African refugee youth: early disadvantage, limited navigational capacity, adaptive preferences, and racial stereotypes. Without an expansive view of disadvantage, it is hardly possible to break the link between marginal social position and low educational attainment of refugees.

KEYWORDS:

• Refugee education
• African refugees
• Australian higher education
• the capability approach
• problem representation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [DE190100193].

Notes on contributors

Tebeje Molla

Tebeje Molla is an ARC DECRA Fellow in the School of Education, Deakin University. His research areas include educational inequality and policy responses and transnational education policy processes. He is currently leading a nationally funded project that explores higher education participation among African refugee youth in Australia. Theoretically, Tebeje’s work is informed by critical sociology and the capability approach to social justice and human development.