Non-profit Organizations, Collaborations, and Displaced Student Support in Canada and the USA: A Comparative Case Study

Abstract

Refugee students are supported not only by federal, state, and local government bodies in receiving countries, but also by non-profit organizations. This paper offers a comparative case study of two such entities located in Canada and the USA: World Education Services (WES) and the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA). We emphasize possibilities for scaling the work of WES and MIRA in the context of the neoliberal environments within which they operate, as well as the role of national and state policy in guiding organizational priorities. We frame our analysis with the transformative paradigm suggested by Hurtado (in: Martinez Aleman et al. (eds) Critical approaches to the study of higher education: a practical introduction, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2015), offering a direct link to practice in an effort to improve student experience in the immediate term. We discuss the need for flexible funding, advocacy efforts, and possible avenues for better information sharing among non-profits as well as by the government actors and universities that are frequent collaborators.