The last decade has been marked by large flows of newcomers arriving in Europe. These movements have come to be known as a ‘refugee crisis’ or indeed a ’reception crisis’ (RSA, 2018), which arguably peaked in 2015. Ever since, questions of how best to support – or, indeed, manage – these flows have been at the forefront of public and policy debates. A common discussion is how educational systems and both formal and non-formal actors can, or have had to, respond (e.g. Koehler & Schneider, 2019); whether in terms of ensuring access in policy, developing preparation programmes, providing language and psychosocial support, establishing targeted funding, or offering non-formal provision to fill state gaps. Now, some seven years after this ‘peak’, the research community has had time to document the successes and failures of such initiatives. However, while much of this knowledge focuses on policy and on children and young people in formal school contexts, little disaggregated data is available which covers various forms of learning, at various ages, for various subgroups of the refugee community. This paper takes one aspect of such an intersectional analysis – namely, gender – to summarise what is currently known in European refugee education research, and to identify gaps which remain. 

Specifically, the paper explores the question, ‘What have we learnt about the role of gender in educational provision, outcomes and experiences among refugees in Europe since 2015?’ In doing so, it aims to provide a snapshot of the state of play on the topic of ‘gender’ in European refugee education research at the time of writing (December 2021). More specifically, the paper’s objectives were to identify key gendered challenges and supports; to recognise refugee men’s and women’s gendered agency, and ways in which communities overcome challenges themselves; and to lay out implications for policy, practice and research. To do so, it draws from a systematic review conducted for the Hub for European Refugee Education (HERE) project, based at the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom (see Methods section below for further details). The paper uses Bronfenbrenner’s (1989) ecological systems theory to meta-synthesize – using extracted data from relevant resources from the HERE Knowledge Base – gendered educational challenges and supports which arise at multiple levels and across time.

The HERE project is based at the University of Nottingham, where it is led by Professor Joanna McIntyre. HERE is supported by a Steering Group comprising European experts from stakeholder communities. It is funded by Open Society Foundations and has been further supported via a University of Nottingham ESRC Impact Accelerator grant.

This paper draws on data on from the HERE knowledge base. The HERE database is the result of an ongoing, systematic review and compilation of texts addressing the question, ‘What do we know about the educational provision for and experiences of people from refugee backgrounds who have arrived in Europe since 2015?’ The literature search for the HERE project involved searching databases (e.g. EBSCOHost, ERIC, Google Scholar) and screening titles, abstracts and full texts. In the first stage of the project (April-December 2021), only English-language resources were included. Further inclusion criteria were: (a) being of an accepted publication type (e.g. journal article, report); (b) being published between 2015 and 2021; (c) referring to ‘refugees’, ‘forced migrants’, ‘displaced’ or ‘asylum seekers’; (d) including at least one section on education or teaching about refugees; and (e) referring to research from Europe (or at least one European context, in the case of comparative studies). Resources were excluded if they (a) only contained statistics; (b) primarily focused on health; (c) referred to ‘migrants’ or ‘immigrants’ only; and/or (d) were of an unaccepted publication type (e.g. news article, book review). The resources included in this paper were selected from the HERE knowledge base following a secondary review to determine their fit with the topic of ‘gendered access, outcomes and experiences’. All resources which were tagged with the topic code ‘gender’ were extracted from the database. Of the 641 resources in the database, 20 were tagged as such. Additional inclusion criteria were then applied for the purpose of this review: (a) only those resources discussing empirical findings were included; and (b) only those to which the authors had full text access were included. Only empirical resources were included to allow a meta-analysis of primary data on educational provision, experiences and outcomes currently available on this topic. Only those to which the authors had full text access were included to allow for data extraction. Following this further selection process – which involved two internal reviewers – of the 20 resources tagged with ‘gender’, only one was excluded (for being non-empirical). The remaining 19 resources were selected and underwent full, systematic data extraction. Following this, the data underwent analysis according to Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory and narrative synthesis.

The findings reveal that multi-level gendered challenges do, indeed, impact refugees’ access to education, as well as their progression through and outcomes from it. The majority of the studies report on the experiences of women and girls in particular, documenting micro-level challenges such as poorer health outcomes (which impact the ability to learn) and the fact of having limited prior educational attainment; meso-level constraints such as domestic responsibilities and educators’ dismissive attitudes; and macro-level issues such as a lack of accessible information on gendered support and opportunities. Over time, the findings show that these constraints can impact aspirations. At the same time, there are also supports at all levels, such as having strong individual motivation and previous work experience; support from one’s family and community (of practice); and educational offers which respect (particularly girls’ and women’s) additional, gendered needs. The paper offers implications for refugee education practice across Europe, such as offering women-only opportunities, as well as suggestions for policy and future research.

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1989). ‘Ecological systems theory’. In R. Vasta (Ed.), Annals of child development (Vol. 6), pp. 187–249. London, UK: Jessica Kingsley. Koehler, C., & Schneider, J. (2019). Young refugees in education: The particular challenges of school systems in Europe. Comparative Migration Studies, 7, Article 28. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-019-0129-3 Refugee Support Aegean (RSA) (2018). ‘Reception crisis in Greece: The malignancy of Attica’s refugee camps’. Retrieved from: https://rsaegean.org/en/reception-crisis-in-greece/