Introduction

Introduction

Introduction In this edited book, we focus on the educational transitional experiences of refugees in different countries and regions of the world. Thanks to the diversity of contexts, methodological perspectives and data sources, the book provides a very comprehensive overview of the experiences that refugees have while resettling and trying to get included in a new context.

The first chapter tackles how Norwegian and Finnish Education Acts contribute to the educational equity for refugee children in compulsory education. In this chapter, the authors rely on document analysis and aim at deepening our understanding of how and if education acts ensure the educational rights of refugee children. In the second chapter, the educational rights of a partly invisible group, refugees with disabilities, are analysed both at the document level and based on the empirical data from field studies. This chapter provides a critical look at the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities with an inclusive and intersectional perspective. How refugees with disabilities remain invisible and neglected in practice but also at the international policy level is presented well in this chapter. In the next chapter, we have a descriptive overview of the Turkish context relying on a synthesis of the literature to identify ad hoc educational policy changes that progress towards mainstreaming forced immigrants into public education. As a transit but also high-receiving country, Turkey has had to go through several changes at the policy and practice levels. This chapter provides us with a picture of measures taken to ensure the continuation of education for refugee children. In the fourth chapter, a qualitative longitudinal study presents an analysis of newly arrived immigrants’ prospective and retrospective narratives of their educational pathways. The authors examine the multiple transitions that take place over time and how the aspirations and trajectories of this group are transformed and evolve. The fifth chapter, on the other hand, concentrates on unaccompanied minors in the French political and administrative context and relies on individual cases to reach the experiences during and after migration. The narratives of the unaccompanied minors explain how they reorient their lives and how they experience their migration journey. In the sixth chapter, an educational intervention for cultural well-being from Australia is presented. The Tri-Menu Model of Learning (TMM) that emerged during the Navigating Resettlement Project (NR) in Western Sydney Australia is introduced with implications for the social, cultural and creative needs of young refugees during resettlement. The next chapter also presents educational research that took place in a resettlement context. The seventh chapter reports from two refugee camps in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq where a study focused on adolescent girls whose education has been disrupted upon departing Syria.

14 Introduction

The experienced geographical transitions, social transitions, and educational transitions are documented through ethnographic techniques.

Starting with the eighth chapter, we are taking a closer look at the school context in different countries. The eighth chapter reports on an ethnographic study with educators in Turkey. This study reveals how educators perceive the transitional experiences of refugee children in the Turkish school context. The ninth chapter, similarly, relies on the perceptions of teachers and teacher educators from Austria, Denmark, Norway and the UK to draw a picture of how refugee education takes place in these countries and how teachers and teacher educators make meaning of their experiences with refugee children. The next chapter presents a comparison of German and Italian contexts to explore how transitions of newly arrived students are negotiated and thematised at the level of interaction in school organisation. The study reveals how newly arrived students are addressed differently from mainstream students in terms of performance expectations.

The eleventh chapter is the first of the four chapters that tackle the parents’ perspective on the education of refugee children. This chapter contributes to the discourse on refugees and educational transition, with a specific focus on the engagement of parents from refugee backgrounds after resettlement in Australia. The chapter discusses how resettlement sets in motion a process of transition, impacting not only refugee families who move to Australia but also the educators and others from the Australian school community. The next chapter presents a study from the Greek context which has experienced substantial changes due to refugee movements. This study shows how refugee parents and their children face major problems in their transition from their country to Greece due to xenophobia, racism and the lack of job opportunities and how these affect the schooling process. The thirteenth chapter explores various aspects of transitions, such as role transitions, educational transitions and sociopolitical transitions and their intersections by relying on the data from refugee families. This study shows what transitions, opportunities and challenges the refugee families experience in the Icelandic context. The fourteenth chapter reports from the Irish context and relies on the perspectives of parents to understand the schooling experiences of children from a migrant background in Ireland. The ethnographic study highlights the transitional challenges confronting migrant families as they navigate the Irish education system. Among these challenges are children’s experiences of isolation, bullying and stereotypes, complacent teacher attitudes and difficulties in building friendships with children from different backgrounds.

The last chapter, on the other hand, reports on Vietnamese refugees’ linguistic, cultural, social, and educational experiences and perceptions with a longitudinal perspective. The qualitative study indicates how the Vietnamese

Introduction 15

refugees who have lived in Iceland for forty years have settled and adapted to Icelandic society despite many challenges throughout the years in Iceland.

We hope that readers will find the chapters in this book thoughtprovoking and informative. We thank all authors for their contributions that offer us a new perspective on refugee education.

Seyda Subasi Singh Olja Jovanović Michelle Proyer