This study critically examines the educational impact of dispersal policies of humanitarian resettlement that see refugee and asylum-seeking young people relocated to rural and regional settings. Situated in a multiphase policy analysis project, this paper reports the experience of a regional Australian secondary school as it interacts with Federal resettlement policies, state-level educational policies and localised practice realities. We drew on qualitative data from school leaders and staff in one regional school to capture the multi-positioning of school-level actors as they navigate the localised enactment realities of refugee education policy against the backdrop of a Federally dispersal policy.

Australia, like many European countries, participates in the international trend of dispersal of refugees and asylum seekers into rural and regional areas. This regionalisation of humanitarian resettlement has been deployed internationally for decades and is situated around two key rationales: a) resettling populations can rejuvenate rural areas facing decades-long social and economic decline; and b) metropolitan centres would benefit from a decrease in populations requiring support (DoHA, 2019). Australia’s regional resettlement program is comprised of 14 regional locations that are defined as regional resettlement zones, spaces in which the Federal Australian government aims to resettle up to 50% of humanitarian entrants by 2022 (DoHA, 2019).

However, reviews into regional resettlement found that while regional areas can be quieter, safer and more accessible for refugee-background families, major challenges remain in the material, social and economic conditions required to facilitate successful settlement (Piper, 2017; van Kooy et al., 2019). Scholars further suggest that regional spaces are conceptualised as under-developed and disadvantaged compared with metropolitan areas, and that resettlement policies and programs developed in metropolitan settings often fail to understand the historic and contemporary realities of regional spaces (Cloke, 2002; Cuervo, 2016).

In the context of regionalising resettlement, regional schools are navigating inconsistency in refugee education policies at state and federal levels (Matthews, 2008) in order to respond to new educational needs. Existing rural refugee education research suggests that while schools are under-resourced, under-supported and unfamiliar in the provision of refugee education, they are often the primary sites of support for refugee-background students in difficult community contexts (Colvin, 2017; Cuervo, 2016; Wilkinson & Langat, 2012).

This paper reports a case study of how one regional Australian secondary school is managing these complex conditions to manage significant demographic and educational changes in their school and local community. This case study engaged leaders and staff from a regional secondary school to explore the ways in which they navigate local, State and Federal realities in order to provide effective education for refugee-background students.

Ball et al. (2012) suggest that school-based policy actors take up multiple ‘policy positions’ in order to understand and enact policy (p. 49). This paper particularly utilises the concept of ‘policy actors’ (Ball et. al, 2012) to explore the multi-positioning of school staff as simultaneously the unconsulted receivers of departmental, state and federal policies; and the experienced developers and enactors of localised policy and practice. Further, Mettler (2016) particularly posits that historical policies become institutions and frameworks that influence and inform the production of existing policy, leading to a ‘policyscape’ in which policies or policy absences are formed. The work of Mettler (2016) is engaged in this study to examine the complex ‘policyscape’ of refugee education in Australia and how school-level policy actors are constrained or enabled by policy or the absence of it. Finally, this study examines the ways in which school-level policy actors navigate the complex and ‘misaligned’ state and federal systems (Savage & O’Connor, 2018, p. 816) to creatively respond to and make space for refugee student needs within their local context.

This study sought to conduct an in-depth qualitative case study in a regional Australian secondary school that was recognised and recommended amongst refugee-background communities and educational sectors. The data presented in this paper is part of a national ARC-Linkage project involving a multi-phase critical examination of the policies, practices, relationships, and events that shape the schooling experiences of refugee students and promote their resilience. The data in this paper comes from a school that was specifically selected due to its location in a Federally-designated regional resettlement zone. In particular, the school is recognised as receiving a rapidly increasing number of refugee-background students due to the Federal practices of regional and rural resettlement. Three school leaders were engaged in an audio-recorded, interactive qualitative “walking-alongside” tour of the school campus (Kinney, 2018) that allowed for an embodied qualitative discussion of the school leaders’ perspectives on refugee-background students in their school. Photographs were also taken by researchers during the “walking-alongside” tour in order to capture elements of the physical and social geography of the school campus as directed by school leaders. A further ten teachers and support staff participated in audio-recorded semi-structured qualitative interviews designed to examine their experiences of and perspectives on the localised enactment of policies and practices relating to refugee-background students. The study takes an iterative approach to data analysis, engaging in a “reflexive process in which the researcher visits and revisits the data” (Srivastava & Hopwood, 2009). More specifically, audio-recordings of the qualitative walking tour and the semi-structured interviews were transcribed verbatim and photographs taken during the “walking-alongside” tour provided visual artefacts for contextual analysis alongside the transcripts. The analysis process involved manual coding and collaborative discussions of first-level codes, the development of a coding framework from this primary coding cycle and then the use of Nvivo 12 software for computer-assisted re-coding of the data (Tracey, 2013). The qualitative school data was then considered alongside a document analysis of key Federal policy documents and artefacts in order to critically examine the case study school’s experience of and interaction with the Australian regional resettlement program.

The case study school indicates that while Federal policies of dispersal may be developed for beneficial social and economic outcomes, the local conditions in regional areas require schools to engage in a complex process of policy navigation and negotiation in the education of refugee-background students: a) Staff experience a multi-positioning as policy actors in the refugee education space, as they act simultaneously as specialised experts at a local level, and unconsulted, passive receivers of departmental, State and Federal policies. b) Staff experience significant gaps between departmental, State and Federal policies and the localised realities of refugee education in a regional area, and particularly reflect the challenges of metro-centric policy development that fails to understand the unique needs of regional schools. c) Staff creatively navigate a misaligned governance system in order to manage and reconfigure policies that fail to meet refugee student needs These findings contribute to a long-term critique of the refugee education policyscape, primarily reflecting the ‘piecemeal’ approach to refugee education at all levels of governance (Matthews, 2008). This lacking approach is reflected in the case study, as local staff members shoulder the responsibility of developing expertise and practices to the meet the needs of students in a challenging context. Mettler (2016) states that a policyscape is a ‘landscape densely laden with policies created in the past that have themselves become established institutions’ (p. 369) and the ongoing absences in refugee education policy internationally contribute to uncertainty and inconsistency at local levels. This has particular implications for already under-resourced and under-supported regional schools that are experiencing significant demographic change. Regional schools in Australia and internationally will continue contend with nuanced local realities in order to provide refugee education, and Federal policies of dispersal must adequately consider local realities and conditions required for the successful settlement of refugee-background young people.

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