Erratum

The online version of the original article can be found at     

Finding education: Stories of how young former refugees constituted strategic identities in order to access school

Educators in resettlement countries are grappling with ways to adequately engage and meet the needs of newly arrived refugee students. In this article we argue that to fully meet the needs of refugee students a deeper understanding of their educational experience as ‘a refugee’ prior to resettlement is vital. In particular we foreground the stories of three young former refugees and explore the ways in which they actively constructed new identities in order to access school in their host countries, prior to resettlement. This article discusses how the negative discursive positioning of ‘the refugee’ in the world today has limited the resources and access to education for young refugees. It concludes by arguing that as these students move into education in Australia there is a danger to quickly relabel young former refugees with deficit terms rather than opening up a discourse to include the intricate complexities of each refugee experience.     

The Resurgence of Puritanism in the West

Puritanism describes a frame of mind in which social phenomena (from rules and procedures to relationships and emotion) are treated as absolute. It finds expression as formal and highly structured societies which, in the West, have begun to undermine their own foundations. Thus, for instance, security, re-presented as an absolute, is eating away at basic liberties; and the absolute sanctity of family and relationships now requires the supervision of behavior to an extent, and a level of distrust, that is rarely seen except in the most distressed societies.

The explanation for Puritanism offered here deals with the difficulties confronting existing perspectives without rejecting them in their entirety. For instance, narcissism may be explained in part by creeping bureaucracy and professionalization even as Puritanism finds expression through a greatly heightened sense of self and its importance. Rationality can make an organization more impersonal. But rationality emerges from the organization to protect social relationships and emotion, not to excise them. Losing sight of this hastens the shift to a state of Puritanism; and it is Puritanism that transforms rationality into an unyielding doctrine. The perspective offered here also explains how and why there emerge states of mind in which relationships, emotions, ideas, and practice are treated as if absolute (as if significant in their own right). This is important not least because it suggests that the slide from Puritanism into divisiveness, intolerance, and instability which now seems very likely is not inexorable.