Educating Students with Refugee and Asylum Seeker Experiences. Maura Sellars
to the stark realities that are so much part of everyday lives in westernized societies to be accepted without critical reflection and without attention to what it is to be human and humane. I hope, that as this book is read, that the readers can place the children and young people in their lives in the situation that faces the students who compelled me to write this work, and that they can place themselves in these communities. I also hope that some positive action, some constructive discourse and some restorative engagement can be prompted in educational contexts to create an increased sense of belonging, compassion and hope for all these students and their new futures.
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Power, Politics, People and Pedagogy
Chapter Two: Power: Discourses of Power
Chapter Three: Politics: Neoliberalism and Education
Chapter Four: People: Refugee status, Trauma and Loss
Chapter Five: People: Compassion and Beloning
Chapter Six: People: Schools as Safe Spaces
Chapter Seven: People: The School and Leadeship
Chapter Eight: Pedagogy: Ways of Knowing and Doing
Chapter Nine: Pedagogy: Educating for Global Competence
[1] Chapter One: Power, Politics, People and Pedagogy
Introduction
The world is currently disrupted by famine, war, violence, and the predatory actions of people against each other. At the time of writing, nearly 66 million people, the largest number in history, are displaced from their homes and urgently in need of assistance from those who are more fortunate. Fifty five percent of these come from just three countries; Syria (5.5 million), Afghanistan (2.5 million) and South Sudan (1.4 million) http://www.unhcr.org/en-au/figures-at-a-glance.html). Almost three million of this number are temporarily placed in Turkey, one and a half million in Pakistan, almost one million in both Lebanon and the Islamic Republic of Iran, and eight hundred thousand in Ethiopia. There are twenty- two and a half million refugees. Over half of this number are under 18 years of age, all of whom have experienced atrocities associated with their refugee status. Refugees are those individuals who must flee their own countries for fear of prosecution as the result of their race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership of a specific social group (see http://www.unhcr.org/en-au/figures-at-a-glance.html). Despite their many differences, these individuals have several characteristics in common. These include an overwhelming sense of loss, emotional if not physical trauma and suffering, and the desperate journey to escape the familiar contexts in which they were previously domiciled. The details of these flights vary considerably. The impact on mental, emotional and physical wellbeing is universal, only varying in degree.
Davidson, Murray, and Schweitzer (2008), found that refugee experiences result in poorer general health; poorer mental health including increased somatisation and dissociation; increased levels of psychological distress including susceptibility to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and depression; impairments in cognitive function; low perceptions of educational achievement and career aspirations; a lack of family cohesion and reduced feelings of belonging (in Sellars & Murphy, 2017:2).
These statistics, although confrontational, are hardly surprising. Many people are detained in rudimentary camps with few or no amenities, overcrowding and little chance of improving their circumstances independently. Although relief agencies [2] and other groups often attempt to provide some educational experiences for youth, the lack of resources and transitory nature of these sites and their occupants make consistent, skilled support impossible. Education, if it exists for some youth at all, is invariably interrupted. The focus of this writing does not include the difficulties of educational provision for children and adults in such camps as it may be fraught with other contextual complications.
Several countries act as hosts to these camps and detention centres on a temporary basis, whilst other countries agree to accept an agreed quota of individuals in various categories each year. The latter include ‘first world’ countries; democratic, industrialized, capitalist countries which often have similar economic interests (see http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/third_world_countries.htm). Less than half of the displaced population is hosted by these countries. Seventeen percent are in Europe, sixteen percent in The Americas and eleven percent in Asia and the Pacific. It is in these locations that young people who are of appropriate age, are most likely to be compelled to participate in mandatory, mass education. Mass education universally is characterised by three core elements;
‘.. is institutionally chartered to be universal, standardized and rationalized….institutionalized at a very general collective level…is institutionally chartered to conduct the socialization of the individual as the central social unit…’ (Boli, Ramirez, & Meyer, 1985: 148-149).
It is these contexts and their students with refugee experiences that are the focus of this work.
Mass Education in a Neoliberal Paradigm
The establishment of school systems and mandatory attendance for children and young people between certain ages is not new, nor is it confined to first world countries. Similar systems have been established in most parts of the world, differing only in the detail of how they are administered (Boli et al., 1985). As society changed in response to advancements in industry, technology, the economy and world affairs, so did the nature and characteristics of education (Tait, 2013). Currently, educational policies in capitalist countries are heavily influenced by the ideologies of various versions of neo liberal economic policies. The neo liberal policies of the 1980s, although differing in the detail, resulted in the break from the Keynesian post war policies which had led to the development of systems such as Swedish social democracy and the welfare provisions in the UK (Steger & Roy, [3] 2010) . The government controlled all the flow of money in and out of the country and high taxes on the wealthy and large corporate companies were used to pay for increased social services and higher wages for workers. Neoliberalist principles championed by Thatcher in the UK and Reagan in the USA focused on a very different paradigm indeed. The common foundations of all neoliberal policies that were implemented during that period were Deregulation, Liberalism and Privatization. During the 1990s Blair in the UK and Clinton in the USA, followed by many of their trading partners, took a more moderate approach and attempted to balance this free trade model (liberalism) with more sensitivity towards the community concerns and social responsibilities that were the results of the policies in the previous decade. Global financial crisis and the establishment of the World Trade Organisation have had some