Tracing pathways to higher education for refugees: the role of virtual support networks and mobile phones for women in refugee camps

Pathways to Educational Success Among Refugees: Connecting Locally and Globally Situated Resources

“…As a second step, we analyzed the data across a set of subcategories. We were particularly interested in considering differences in the survey results by sex, given existing inequalities (see also Dahya & Dryden-Peterson, 2016); and residence (or not) in a refugee camp and length of stay in a refugee camp, as connected to our questions about supports for education that refugees in camps access. Third, we considered the results based on the type of virtual support prioritized by the respondent.…”

“…Her mother supported her, though, by "not condemning" her if she was not able to finish the housework. Expectations for girls to complete domestic work consistently emerged from the research participants as a barrier to education, yet family members were enablers, taking on household duties, ensuring their children were fed and clothed; sometimes, especially for girls, a family enabled by not standing in the student's way (on gender roles, see also Dahya & Dryden-Peterson, 2016).…”

In a New Land

“…As the HCI literature at the intersection of refugee and mobile phone studies illustrates [e.g. 1,12,22,43,50], security in the context of newcomers is driven as much by the functionality of the mobile phone as the integrity of the mobile phone platform. Hence, a broad interpretation of security needs to be developed to build a design framework and to further develop support strategies that embrace both the freedoms that mobile phone use can enable and the need to protect from the harms that can be introduced by that same use.…”

“…24,27,48], with some writings revolving around mobile phone use in refugee camps. For example, Dahya and Dryden-Peterson [12] found that mobile technology was central to expanding the opportunities for Somali refugee women's education in the Dadaab refugee camps of Kenya. Fisher et al [22] studied how Syrian youths use connected technology to help others in the Za'atari refugee camp in Jordan, whilst Maitland and Xu [37] found that a large majority (86%) of refugees in the same camp owned a mobile phone.…”

“…Previous HCI work on mobile phones and refugees has given a focus to the benefits of designing better technology and ensure greater connectivity for this group of individuals and how such initiatives might improve the lives of this perceivably vulnerable group [e.g. 1,12,22,43]. Whilst such discussions are critical, our findings crystallise that there is also the need to broaden this security frame to include sociological understandings of ontological security and theories of everyday security to reflect both positive and negative security, and in practical terms, how individuals can balance both types of security.…”