The “Refugee Brand” and Humanitarian Education: a critique of the discourse of education of refugee children

ERI – Open Seminar by Dr Maha Shuayb

Abstract

Education has been increasingly recognised as an integral component in any response to a refugee crisis. This has been accompanied by a proliferation of research, publications and discussion around this issue. Most recently, UNHCR published its strategy “Education of Refugee 2030”. At the same time, the Education in Emergency Framework has proliferated during the past ten years and have been translated to 20 different languages. Despite the significant development in this field, there are a number of challenges in the discourse of education of refugees.

In this talk, I will focus on two main challenges. The first is concerned with humanitarian education. Humanitarianism is concerned with the immediate while education is a future-oriented activity. Hence the interrelation between the two might appear oxymoron (Shuayb and Brun, forthcoming). While the UNHCR refugee education strategy (2019) calls for a shift to a developmental vision of education, there is a lack of clarity concerning the concept of development which the education provisions rest on.

The second issue this presentation aims to unpack the reification and objectification of “refugee children” which best manifested in Stein’s work (1981) who talks about the “refugee experience” as being very unique and refugees as a homogeneous group. Duha Al Hassan calls it the “Refugee Brand” (2016). In education, the reification is manifested in the dichotomy that exists between, on the one hand, the literature on equity and equality in education, and on the other hand the literature and research on the education of refugee children. This exceptionalism approach of refugees has resulted in further segregation and exclusion. There have been calls for introducing new curricula for refugees as the existing national and ‘state’ confined curricula fail to respond to their needs. Drawing on an ongoing comparative longitudinal study of refugee children and nationals in Lebanon, Turkey and Australia, I examine the limitations of different modalities of integration and segregation education provisions for refugees.

The seminar will be streamed live at https://cam.adobeconnect.com/eri/ and a recording will be uploaded to https://sms.cam.ac.uk/collection/2476393

All welcome

Bring your own lunch

Education Reform and Innovation Team

Faculty of Education, 184 Hills Road, CB28PQ eri@educ.cam.ac.uk