In December 2021, the Guardian newspaper ran an article about the huge costs national governments were spending on ‘the rising numbers of high-tech surveillance and deterrent systems facing asylum seekers’ across ‘Fortress Europe’. Such hostile uses of technology have been accompanied by equally hostile discourses in political and mass media responses to the plight of those arriving at the borders of so-called places of ‘sanctuary’, after being forcibly displaced from their homes. The historian Andreas Kossert writes that movement has been a feature of human existence throughout time but that recent forced migration is ‘seen in apocalyptic terms and metaphors’ (2022), echoing Arendt’s (1951) depiction of refugees from World War 2 as ‘pariahs’.  According to Bauman’s (2004) analysis, these uprooted humans are dispensable ‘human waste’, in the border politics of securitization and globalisation. What is the role of state education provision in such hostile public environments?  Can sites of education provide sanctuary for those who have been forcibly uprooted?

In this symposia we bring together an exploration of the ways in which refugees navigate obstacles and barriers to resuming or starting education in their new context. We explore how the human experiences of education impact those supporting forced migrants in their new contexts as they endeavour to create educational sites of inclusion and diversity in their hopes to foster a sense of sanctuary for newcomers in societies far distant from original homelands. These educational acts of welcome and inclusion are a counter to the dominant political narratives that shape public life in many European contexts. The symposia unearths tensions and paradoxes as uncomfortable realities of ‘preferred’ and ‘unwelcome’ sanctuary seekers are navigated and experienced.

The presenters are all part of the newly formed Hub for European Education (HERE) Network (www.hubhere.org). HERE was established as a base for knowledge transfer about children and adult learners’ post migration experiences in Europe, focusing on their right to an ‘inclusive and equitable quality education’ in their resettlement context (UNESCO, 2015). The Hub collates research, advisory and advocacy activity across Europe. It brings together academic and stakeholder expertise of policies and practices for integrating children and young people with refugee backgrounds through education in order to help them to be able to live lives of dignity and value in their new societies. 

Drawing upon cases from several international contexts, each presentation focuses on the tensions and dilemmas of refugee education in current times where the right to education (SDG4) for refugees and asylum seekers is not a given. Part one of the symposium has a focus on the construction of refugees, refugee education and implications of explicit and implicit framing, labelling, and repercussions of epistemic justice in practice in shifting political times. The papers are drawn from Sweden, Finland, Austria, Ireland, England and Australia. Part two moves the emphasis to educators’ responses and the ways in which they respond to diversity in these times of mass migration, closing with an exploration of differences in education provision in Europe which questions the ‘exceptionality’ of Refugee Education. The second part features papers from Finland and England and Austria.

Each part of the symposia will close with reflections from a discussant who will provide a commentary foregrounding the tensions and convergences within the educational research presented here. The audience will be invited to reflect on the presentations and to consider Kossert’s (2002) provocation that we should not be complacent, ‘Because there is a refugee in all of us’, and therefore finding ways to create places of diversity and sanctuary through education should be an imperative for us all, especially those of us living within ‘Fortress Europe’.

Ahmed, K. & Tondo, L. 2021. Fortress Europe; the millions spent on military-grade tech to deter refugees. The Guardian. December 6 2021. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/dec/06/fortress-europe-the-millions-spent-on-military-grade-tech-to-deter-refugees Arendt, H. 1951 (2017 edition). The Origins of Totalitarianism. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Bauman, Z. 2004 Wasted Lives: Modernity and its Outcasts. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kossert, A. 2022. The refugee in all of us. The New European June 16 2022. Available at https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/andreas-kossert-on-the-refugee-in-all-of-us/