This article explores the understood purposes of refugee education at global, national, and school levels. To do so, we focus on a radical shift in global policy to integrate refugees into national education systems and the processes of vernacularization accompanying its widespread implementation. We use a comparative case study approach; our dataset comprises global policy documents and original interviews ( n = 147) and observations in 14 refugee-hosting nation-states. We analyze how the purposes of refugee education are understood and acted upon by actors occupying diverse positions across these nation-states and over time. We demonstrate that the articulated purposes of refugee education are oriented toward possible futures for refugees, and they presuppose refugees’ access to quality education, social belonging, and economic opportunities. Yet we find that across nation-states of exile, refugees’ access to these resources is tenuous. Our findings suggest reconceptualizing refugee education to reflect how refugees are simultaneously embedded within multiple national contexts and to address the exclusions they face within each one. This study of refugee education has implications for understanding the purposes of education in other ever-more-common contexts of uncertainty, including the rapid economic and social changes brought about by migration, globalization, and technology. Empirically, understanding the purposes of refugee education is critical in a time of unprecedented forced migration.

This paper explores the impact of global policy shifts toward 'national integration' on schooling for refugee youth in Kenya. Based on interviews and classroom observations in Kakuma Refugee Camp, we theorize that integration manifests in a multidirectional, hierarchical manner as few refugees integrate up into government schools, while most integrate down into segregated camp schools. We examine how youth interpret and navigate these oppositional paths, imbued with assumptions about quality and status. We argue that global policy can foster structures for physical integration; however, social integration, integrally connected to protection and opportunity, depends on local strategies and practices, encompassing formal decisions about adapting policy, as well as embedded beliefs about the purposes of educating refugees and their long-term inclusion in host societies. This study responds to calls for deeper sociological attention to education and global migration, as states expand educational opportunities for refugee populations while negotiating educational rights amongst citizens.

This study explores the role of academic and social support on young people's educational pursuits in Kenya's Kakuma Refugee Camp. Pairing ethnographic methods with youth participatory action research, we find that support often manifests as abstract, decontextualized encouragement with little grounding in the educational opportunity structure. We argue that this motivational discourse generates information gaps, fueling aspirations that neither prepare youth for understanding, nor navigating the constraints they will encounter. In response, we designed a social media platform orienting Kakuma youth to the opportunity structure, while encouraging them to set realistic goals and plan accordingly. Designing a resource by, for, and with Kakuma youth, we illustrate that refugees have the rights and means to access information on which their everyday wellbeing and futures depend. This study illustrates that critical understanding of local and global opportunities can empower, rather than demoralize, young people as they shape their futures in exile.

In this article, Michelle J. Bellino explores contrasting approaches to civic education in two rural schools serving indigenous Maya youth in post–civil war Guatemala. Through comparative ethnography, she examines how youth civic pathways intersect with legacies of authoritarianism while young people shape their identity as members of historically oppressed groups. She suggests that student decisions about how and when to participate in civic issues function as a risk calculus, taking into consideration the costs and benefits of both participation and nonparticipation as well as the civic obligation to abstain or join communities in struggle. Although serving similarly impoverished communities hard-hit by state actors during the war and now struggling with issues of indigenous autonomy, both schools position daily experiences with injustice as an entry point for constructing youth citizenship. Beyond this shared experience of historical injustice and its ongoing effects, educators envision young peoples' roles according to different risk structures. In this way, youth construct civic pathways while traversing between the potential for risk and reward, in part informed by their experiences in school.

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