Language considerations in refugee education: languages for opportunity, connection, and roots

Abstract

Currently 26 million people live as refugees, 40% of whom are school-aged. As global policy shifts to include refugee children and young people in education systems in settings of exile, language-in-education emerges as an under-explored challenge for refugee learners and the education systems they join. Refugee young people face uncertain futures, prompting questions about which languages can enable refugees to realize their multi-directional aspirations. Drawing on 80 semi-structured interviews with 45 Sudanese, South Sudanese, and Syrian refugee young people living in Uganda and Lebanon, we analyze the linguistic experiences of refugees across locations, ages, and educational stages. We find that current practices of inclusion within national education systems in exile only partially attend to refugees’ linguistic needs. Global policies of educational inclusion focus almost exclusively on the languages of school and work in exile, an approach which fails to support refugees in meeting three key needs in exile: the need for opportunity, connection, and stable roots. Attention to these three needs can support refugee learners’ diverse linguistic repertoires as they develop the linguistic skills needed to navigate education in exile while also sustaining the languages that root young people in places, communities, and relationships of origin.