Prelims

Half Title Page

REFUGEES IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Series Page

Great Debates in Higher Education is a series of short, accessible books addressing key challenges to and issues in Higher Education, on a national and international level. These books are research informed but debate driven. They are intended to be relevant to a broad spectrum of researchers, students, and administrators in higher education, and are designed to help us unpick and assess the state of higher education systems, policies, and social and economic impacts.

Published titles:

• Teaching Excellence in Higher Education: Challenges, Changes and the Teaching Excellence Framework

  Edited by Amanda French and Matt O’Leary

• British Universities in the Brexit Moment: Political, Economic and Cultural Implications

  Mike Finn

• Sexual Violence on Campus: Power-Conscious Approaches to Awareness, Prevention, and Response

  Chris Linder

• Higher Education, Access and Funding: The UK in International Perspective

  Edited by Sheila Riddell, Sarah Minty, Elisabet Weedon, and Susan Whittaker

• Evaluating Scholarship and Research Impact: History, Practices, and Policy Development

  Jeffrey W. Alstete, Nicholas J. Beutell, and John P. Meyer

• The Marketisation of English Higher Education: A Policy Analysis of a Risk-Based System

  Colin McCaig

• Access to Success and Social Mobility through Higher Education: A Curate’s Egg?

  Edited by Stuart Billingham

Title Page

REFUGEES IN HIGHER EDUCATION: DEBATE, DISCOURSE AND PRACTICE

BY

JACQUELINE STEVENSON

Sheffield Hallam University, UK

SALLY BAKER

University of New South Wales, Australia

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2018

Copyright © 2018 Jacqueline Stevenson and Sally Baker. Published under exclusive licence.

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No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78754-216-7 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78743-714-2 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78743-967-2 (Epub)

Acknowledgments

We dedicate this book to the many refugee students who we have worked with over the years, and who have invariably influenced our practice, research and advocacy. We have seen what meaningful access to higher education (with support and care) can do to elevate a person’s sense of what is possible, and how they can rebuild some of the resources and opportunities lost through forced displacement. We have often heard our students express enormous gratitude for the opportunity to study, despite the impediments that universities inadvertently impose through inflexible, unresponsive, and punitive structures, systems and practices. We recognise that these students seldom get to speak about their educational experiences into powerful spaces like this book, and when rare opportunities to share the higher education experiences of refugee students are opened, these often trumpet the resilient individual, thus ignoring the many refugee students engaged in higher education. This book is a testament to all those students.

We would also like to thank Aaliyah, Andy and Sadiya whose stories appear in this book. In addition, we express our immense gratitude to our very patient families, and offer heart-warming thanks to Evonne Irwin, Jackie Tuck and Asher Hirsch for their intellectual support with the writing of this book, as well as those other scholars and practitioners working to open up higher education spaces to refugees in the UK, Australia and elsewhere.

About the Authors

Professor Jacqueline Stevenson is Professor of Education Research and Head of Research in the Sheffield Institute of Education, Sheffield Hallam University. She is a sociologist of education with a particular interest in policy and practice relating to equity and diversity in higher education (HE), widening participation (WP), access and student success, pedagogic diversity and the stratification and marketisation of HE. Key areas of interest are the social and academic experiences of religious students, Black and Minority ethnic students’ degree attainment and success, and policy and practice relating to the access of refugees and asylum seekers to HE. She draws on the theoretical lenses of resilience, belonging, mattering, time, temporality and future selves. Her research is primarily qualitative, using biography, narrative inquiry and life history. Jacqueline co-convenes the Society for Research into Higher Education’s Access and Widening Participation Network and is a member of the Steering committee of the Higher Education Race Action Group. Her recent edited books include Evaluating Equity and Widening Participation in Higher Education, Religion and Higher Education, and Possible Selves and Higher Education: New Interdisciplinary Insights. Jacqueline was previously Professor of Higher Education at Leeds Beckett University.

Dr Sally Baker is a Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences and the education ‘focal point’ for the Forced Migration Research Network at The University of New South Wales. Sally’s teaching and research interests centre on language, literacies, transition and equity in higher education, particularly with regard to culturally and linguistically diverse students, and refugee students in particular. As a sociologist of higher education, Sally works with the Academic Literacies conceptual and methodological framework, seeking to develop rich, contextualised pictures of students’ experiences, and to expose the discourses, logics and power of institutions to open and constrain opportunities to particular groups of students. As a practitioner–teacher with 15 years’ experience of working with refugees, Sally’s experiences in this field have led her to be a passionate advocate for social justice and language/literacies praxis, and she is the co-chair of the national Refugee Education Special Interest Group (supported by the Refugee Council of Australia). This SIG is designed to encompass all the stakeholders involved in settlement and support of refugees to help close the information and practice gaps between these groups and work to share good practice, research, and to advocate for better imaginaries for these students (http://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/ourwork/educationsigmedia/).