There are more child refugees in Europe than at any point since the end of the Second World War (Save the Children 2016). This is affecting both communities on the move and communities where uprooted people are resettling. A humanitarian problem on this scale demands a socially just response. For young refugees, education is a fundamental means of integrating into their new context and the act of going to school is a facilitating factor in their resumption of an everyday existence after periods of traumatic upheaval.
This paper’s focus is a case study of how schools work with newly arrived children in England (historically both focus and locus for immigrants) and Sweden (to whom large numbers of immigrants are a new phenomenon). Understanding the positioning of the newly arrived within national educational policy discourses illuminates the values underpinning political decision making in these two differing European contexts (Ball 1998, 124). Policies and practices in these contexts which lead to, or obstruct, new arrivals living an everyday life and participating in education are examined through the two theoretical concepts: ‘participatory parity’ (Fraser 2003) and ‘resumption of an ordinary life’ (Kohli 2014) as we explore each state’s policy response.
‘Participatory Parity’
The term ‘participatory parity’ encompasses Fraser’s understanding of social justice which is predicated on socio-economic (distribution), cultural (recognition) and political (representation) dimensions (2003). For our focus, the distribution of resource is the extent to which new arrivals are able to access education both in policy terms and in practice. Within this, there needs to be recognition of the needs of different groups of refugees, and importantly of different individuals within these groups, and for these to be culturally responsive without stigmatising or othering the child from the rest of society. To avoid misrecognition, policies and processes need to ensure that refugee children can access and engage in educational experiences that allow them to participate on a par with others. Considering these concepts together can help to develop a socially just response. Further, to avoid misrepresentation, political obstacles to participatory parity need to be avoided, such as policies and decision-making process that marginalise and exclude newly arrived children from their right to an education.
Fraser utilises the device of a frame to understand how national policies can be considered in relation to global issues. Comparing the framing of policies and practices in Sweden and England illuminates how policies are official responses to perceived problems and issues. A key problem for individuals affected by the current migration crisis is how they experience the implementation of these national responses in the everyday acts of becoming ordinary in their new context.
‘Resumption of an ordinary life’
Kohli argues that becoming a forced migrant signals the ‘death of everyday life’ (Kohli 2014, 87). Access to education is a key indicator of becoming ordinary. Rebuilding this ordinariness becomes an imperative once a resettlement destination has been reached and the geographical movement has ceased. The journey to an ‘ordinary life’ is dependent upon several intersecting contextual factors. These include the individual’s own strengths and aptitudes, previous experiences and future goals but also the ‘scaffolding provided by others’ (ibid). National policies and their enactment locally dictate the structure of this scaffolding in new ‘home’ contexts, and therefore the nature of the journey towards everyday ordinariness and routine.
Educational research on new arrivals is limited; we would go further to argue that it often has a one-sided national perspective (e.g. Nilsson Folke 2017). Our project explores how this issue is simultaneously experienced in differing European contexts. This therefore contributes to understanding how a specific global issue impacts our local/national environments.
