“What I Believe Can Rescue That Nation”: Diaspora Working to Transform Education in Fragility and Conflict

Abstract

is a PhD candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research explores the intersection of education and migration, with a focus on educational policies and practices that support children's and families' wellbeing in settings of displacement. Celia is a former Editor and Co-Chair of the Harvard Educational Review. 'What I believe can rescue that nation': Diaspora Working to Transform Education in Fragility and Conflict

The Purposes of Refugee Education: Policy and Practice of Including Refugees in National Education Systems

“…A transnational future, similar to the future of return, necessitates maintaining language, culture, and identity of the country of origin in addition to acquiring competencies that allow for productive lives in settings of exile (Fresia and Von Känel 2016; Malkki 1995). Challenging this transnational future are restrictions on refugees’ rights, which can impede belonging and economic opportunities in exile and in countries of origin (Dryden-Peterson and Reddick 2019). Education that prepares refugees for transnational futures might open up opportunities that exist in what Haddad (2008:7) calls the “gaps between states,” but we also consider how pursuing this future can create vulnerabilities, depending on restrictions imposed on refugees by origin and exile nation-states.…”

Toward Cognitive and Temporal Mobility: Language Considerations in Refugee Education

“…In a literature that is emerging, we see educators of refugees using similar pedagogies to support their students in navigating experiences in host countries, including inequities, xenophobia, and discrimination, and in using their learning, including related to language, to imagine and begin to build different kinds of futures (Adelman, 2019; Amour, 2019; Cohen, 2019; Dryden–Peterson & Reddick, 2019). This type of pedagogy decenters whose land this is in a hosting country and the limited notions that spawns of who belongs on it.…”

The Issue

“…In a literature that is emerging, we see educators of refugees using similar pedagogies to support their students in navigating experiences in host countries, including inequities, xenophobia, and discrimination, and in using their learning, including related to language, to imagine and begin to build different kinds of futures (Adelman, 2019;Amour, 2019;Cohen, 2019;Dryden-Peterson & Reddick, 2019). This type of pedagogy decenters whose land this is in a hosting country and the limited notions that spawns of who belongs on it.…”