The right to education of children and youngsters from refugee families in Europe#

Abstract

The right to education of children and youth from asylum seeker and refugee families is currently being threatened in Europe. Two factors explain this: the sudden and disorganised arrival of large numbers of asylum seeker families, and the inconsistent integration of those seeking refugee status and those who have gained such status. The actual implementation of the right to education for asylum seekers and refugees is a result of a complex combination of factors related to the asylum seeking process: demographic, psychological, economic, legal and sociological. Asylum seeker and refugee education are impacted significantly by these factors. This paper tries to explore whether EU Member States are coping successfully with such dimensions. We provide information on the current situation in Europe, as well as a summary of the latest policy recommendations aimed at improving the present situation.     

Social support networks,instant messaging,and gender equity in refugee education

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses the role of instant messaging chat groups to support teacher training and gender equity initiatives in Kenyan refugee camps. Our findings are based on survey data with refugee teachers in Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps (n?=?203), group interviews with refugee teachers in Kakuma (n?=?21), and interviews with international instructors of teacher training programs in Nairobi, Toronto, and Vancouver (n?=?14). In our analysis, we apply amplification theory, feminist science and technology studies paradigms, and considerations of transnational approaches to understand the use of instant messaging among refugee teacher communities. Our framework explores how social and cultural norms are amplified through transnational text and instant messaging related to teacher training and in support of gender equity. Peer-to-peer group chats draw on transnational learning opportunities and expand these engagements through group chats between men and women refugee teachers across camps as well as through community engagement about gender equity initiatives in education. International instructors identify both value and hesitation in navigating the quantity and content of these communications, such as learning more about refugee teachers’ daily lives in the camps and concern about following and managing the amount of communication that can ensue over chat groups. Our work has practical implications for transnational teacher training programs in refugee camps, illuminates how mobile technology and chat groups allow women and men in the community to engage and support girls’ education, and questions how text messaging affects the lived and day-to-day experiences of women refugee teachers.     

Visual methodologies for research with refugee youth

Abstract

In the current moment of social, political, economic and environmental disquiet, unprecedented numbers of children have been forced to leave their homes and settle in new communities. As schools worldwide receive increasing numbers of refugee youth, there is a pressing need for thoughtful educational research that inquires into the unique individual needs and experiences of displaced learners. Given that students’ journeys are shaped by movements across physical, cultural and linguistic spaces, we suggest that related scholarship might benefit from Third Space theory. Within this theoretical framework, neither language nor culture is static. Rather, both are continuously shaped through interactions – including those that are non-verbal. For students who may be learning in an unfamiliar language, visual methodologies offer a means and venue for communication. To explore how refugee youth might benefit from Third Space theory and visual methodologies, we first review scholarship that examines how children and schools negotiate educational space. We then describe a series of methodologies that scholars might consider when conducting research with refugee youth, including photovoice, fotonovela, digital storytelling and quilting. Significantly, pairing a Third Space theoretical framework with visual and participatory methodologies may address issues of language, power, vulnerability and ethics.     

Digital remediation: social support and online learning communities can help offset rural digital inequality

ABSTRACT

While all students enter college with varying levels of digital skills, those from rural areas may face extra challenges because their own skills and those of their pre-college networks may be underdeveloped. Without some type of intervention, digital deficits can perpetuate further educational disadvantages. We developed an online learning community (OLC) in two sections of an introductory college course and integrated collaborative learning into students’ weekly activities. Regression analysis of survey data (N?=?373) shows three impacts: access to social support is associated with higher skill assessment and improvements in digital skills; rural status is associated with a clear and significant disadvantage in digital skill assessment; and that involvement in an OLC contributed substantially to improvements in digital skills. We conclude with limitations and considerations for future research.     

Status of personal health requirement for graduation at institutions of higher education in the United States

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the proportion of higher education institutions in the United States that require a personal health course (PHC) for graduation and to describe the nature of such requirements. Participants: This study included a random sample of public and private institutions of higher education (IHE) with undergraduate programs within the United States (N = 310). Data were collected between September 2014 and May 2015. Methods: University catalogs were accessed from the institutions' public Web sites to determine whether a PHC was offered, and whether it was exclusively or optionally required for graduation. Results: The majority (55.8%) of the sample offered at least 1 PHC, with only 10% exclusively requiring the course and an additional 10% optionally required the course. Conclusions: Although the utility of undergraduate students completing a PHC is clear, the majority of institutions do not require such a course for degree conferral.     

Refugee life,refugee space: Ankara as a bottom-up alternative

During research conducted in the summer of 2020, I observed the advanced marginality of the refugees in Ankara, Turkey. While some authors have examined this precarity, and some others have examined how refugees have begun to live in a spatially distinct section of certain cities, the combination of these two phenomena demands further investigation. If the underpinning truly is spatial as claimed by Lefebvre (The production of space. Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell, 1991), then the precarious subject and the precarious space co-produce each other. What this paper intends to do is to combine space and precarity using the observations of Wacquant (Urban poverty and the underclass: a reader. Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996, Urban Studies, 2016, 53, 1077) in his various analyses on the ghetto in France and the United States. In Wacquant's work, we can begin to see a spatial conception of precarity, and we can further extend this to the point that as space is a production and its subjects are also a co-constitution of that space. Nevertheless, Sampson (Ethnic & Racial Studies, 2014, 37, 1732) points out a certain state centrism in Wacquant's analysis. Building upon this, as well as the work of Roy (International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2011, 35, 223 and Territories of poverty: rethinking north and south. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015), we can offer the refugee neighbourhood in Ankara as an example of “bottom-up” agency, alternative to Wacquant's original state-centric analysis. In the course of this paper, this possibility of a “bottom-up” refugee solidarity and related refugee space will be analysed.     

Braided geographies: bordered forms and cross-border formations in refugee comics

ABSTRACT

This article offers a close analysis of a trilogy of ‘refugee comics’ entitled ‘A Perilous Journey’, which were produced in 2015 by the non-profit organisation PositiveNegatives, to conceive of comics as a bordered form able to establish alternative cross-border formations, or ‘counter-geographies’, as it calls them. Drawing on the work of Martina Tazzioloi, Thierry Groensteen, Jason Dittmer, Michael Rothberg and others, the article argues that it is by building braided, multi-directional relationships between different geographic spaces, both past and present, that refugee comics realise a set of counter-geographic and potentially decolonising imaginaries. Through their spatial form, refugee comics disassemble geographic space to reveal counter-geographies of multiple synchronic and diachronic relations and coformations, as these occur between different regions and locations, and as they accumulate through complex aggregations of traumatic and other affective memories. The article contends that we need an interdisciplinary combination of the critical reading skills of humanities scholars and the rigorous anthropological, sociological and theoretical work of the social sciences to make sense of the visualisation of these counter-geographic movements in comics. It concludes by showing how the counter-geographies visualised by refugee comics can subvert the geopolitical landscape of discrete nation-states and their territorially bound imagined communities.     

Iraqi refugees in Jordan: lessons for practice with refugees internationally

Asylum seekers, refugees who are resettled in third countries or those who are forced into refugee camps, present new challenges to social work practitioners. In an attempt to advance theory and develop specialised practice in the area of refugee studies within social work as an international profession, we argue that whatever the flight context, the country of asylum or of resettlement, there is a process underlying what Malkki referred to as refugeeness. This article focuses on the situation of Iraqi refugees in Jordan as an example of the challenges that confront today's refugees. We show that salient issues raised in a local community centre's needs assessment mirror those elements that are central to integration processes that have been discussed in much of the refugee studies literature across the world. We show how these concerns are closely linked to processes that resettled refugees and asylum seekers face, regardless of the country of resettlement. We introduce a framework for analysing an individual refugee's situation and show how an international phenomenon is linked to local practice.     

Small-Group Learning and Hypothetical Families in a Large Introductory Course

Abstract

Increased university enrollments and large class sizes, especially at the introductory level, demand creative approaches to promote learning and engagement in the classroom. Small-group work can help achieve these goals, creating a positive and memorable student experience. We propose a small-group exercise that can supplement the traditional lecture format in an introductory marriage and families course. Students are assigned to small groups as members of hypothetical families and are presented with real-life situations over the course of the semester (e.g., job loss or promotion, illness, or extended absence of a family member). Students write about each new situation's effects on their individual character and discuss the implications and potential adjustments for the family. To ensure participation, students who miss class can complete an online version of the assignment. This exercise encourages a critical imagination, promotes interaction and participation, and challenges students to think critically by applying course concepts.     

Dementia: challenges for social work education in Europe

ABSTRACT

Dementia has been identified as a global challenge across the spectrum of health and social care (World Health Organisation. (2012) Dementia: A public health priority. Geneva: WHO). This paper will explore the implications of this for social work education and the challenges it poses. There is a lack of this focus on social work with older people and people with dementia (pwd) in social work education. Based on calls for an infusion of content on ageing and dementia in social work curricula, paper proposes that we should adopt a person-centred philosophy alongside gerontological social work competencies to achieve this. The specific aim of this paper, therefore, is to explore how we can use these ideas as teaching tools to engage social work students in the discourse on dementia and to develop appropriate skills to work with pwd, their families and carers.     

Life Course Social Science Perspectives on the GLBT Family

Abstract

The life course perspective in the social sciences focuses on the place of generation-cohorts in understanding social life. Emphasizing shared understanding of self and society among a group of persons born in some adjacent birth years (often a decade) and the impact of the experience of certain events (a reminiscence bump) taking place across the early adult years, this approach to the study of social life and social change emphasizes social timing and role changes in understanding the course of life. The life course perspective is used in this discussion in understanding sexual minority families including both families in which an offspring self-defines as GLBT across the years of young adulthood, and families in which a parent self-identifies as GLBT, and which includes offspring of one or both partners. Issues in family formation and morale of family members are explored from this life course perspective emphasizing time, social change and the role of the state as factors influencing sexual minority families.     

Poverty among long-term united states immigrants

In this paper we analyze the economic and social characteristics of impoverished long-term immigrants. We investigate in what ways this group differs from poor natives and what factors contribute towards the economic success or failure of long-term immigrants. We found that poor long-term immigrants are more likely than poor natives to live in central cities and to work full-time, and less likely to live in non-female-headed households. Long-term immigrants from refugee countries are over six times as likely ana immigrants from Mexico over three times as likely to be poor as long-term immigrants from Europe, even after considering family structure, education, and citizenship. Also, immigrants who live in single female-headed families are considerably more likely to be poor than those who live in married-couple families, and immigrants in extended families are less likely to be poor than those who are not. The welfare reform bill redefines eligibility criteria for immigrants with respect to participation in Food Stamps, SSI and AFDC. Because of the high risk of poverty among long-term immigrants (particularly refugees), their low rates of naturalization, and the predominance of extended families, it is likely that long-term immigrants will suffer economic setbacks as a result of welfare reform. We posit that this economic hardship is exacerbated by the fact that anti-poverty policies are not tailored to the circumstances of long-term immigrants, many of whom already work full-time     

Symbolic Politics and Policy Feedback: The United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees and American Refugee Policy in the Cold War

Immigration scholars routinely overlook the 1968 U.S. Senate ratification of the United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, an international treaty defining a refugee in ideologically neutral terms. They dismiss this moment as symbolic because U.S. law continued to define a refugee as someone fleeing communism until the passage of the 1980 Refugee Act. We use archival documents, interview data, and court cases to argue that legal and bureaucratic mobilization by refugee advocates throughout the 1970s drew on the Protocol, achieving incremental policy change even before 1980, and ultimately shaped the provisions of the Refugee Act itself.     

Sex,Drugs, Rock ‘n’ Roll…and Children

Abstract

In this article we identify some of the challenges for gay men who desire to create more intimate relationships and more stable families in the evolving and potentially more conducive socio-political environment of the 21st century in the United States. Secondly, we delineate a multi-systemic structural model of working with male couples and families that addresses the interplay of the couple's interactional system with larger religious, civil and social systems. Finally, we demonstrate systemic interventions with a case example of a male couple and their family coping with 21st century challenges.     

Subjectivation,agency and the schooling of raced and dis/abled asylum-seeking children in the Italian context

Abstract

This paper intends to address the challenges that the Italian education system is facing in terms of policies and practices relating to dis/abled asylum-seeking and refugee children, in order to make sense of the politics of daily life inside schools and the network of social services for forced migrants, and to pay renewed attention to the notion of ‘social and educational integration’. The starting point of this paper is the idea that the current model of schooling for asylum-seeking and refugee children is implicated in the making of particular sorts of ‘subjects’, as well as the creation of educational and social exclusions and inequalities. Schools, refugee organisations as well as the work of educators and social workers can be important sites of ‘counter-politics’. Borrowing from the theoretical tools offered by Dis/Ability Critical Race Studies (Dis/Crit) framework and engaging with Judith Butler’s understanding of processes of subjectivation, the paper explores how asylum-seeking and refugee students can be rendered subjects outside the educational endeavour, or indeed outside studenthood. Data from an ongoing constructivist grounded theory doctoral research project, interviews with asylum-seeking children and with professionals working in different refugee services in Rome, are offered to substantiate the argument presented in this paper.     

Evaluating the Social Environment Component of Social Work Courses on Human Behavior and the Social Environment

SUMMARY

This analysis of 117 foundation of Human Behavior and Social Environment (HB&SE) course outlines gathered from 60 graduate schools of social work is based on the HB&SE standards of the Council on Social Work Education (2001). It draws upon an analytic framework for integrating content related to the social environment. Specific criteria for assessment included how well the course outline reflected the reciprocal nature of human behavior and the social environment, presented a strengths perspective, incorporated diversity content, and covered material related to families, groups, organizations, communities, and political economy. Four types of HB&SE course outlines were identified (lifespan-oriented, systems-oriented, theory-oriented, and combination), and results are presented by course outline type. The findings suggest that increased attention to content related to the macro social environment, human diversity, well-being, and theory for practice is needed to strengthen HB&SE foundation courses.