“When I Am a President of Guinea”: Resettled Refugees Traversing Education in Search of a Future

Summary

This article explores how resettled refugees’ educational aspirations collide with post-schooling realities, and the barriers that stand in the way of them achieving their long-term goals.

The authors find that financial insecurity, housing insecurity, violence and discrimination, and limited awareness of unequal opportunity structures stand in the way of resettlement aspirations post-graduation. They also discuss how teachers and schools might be re-tooled to equip refugee students with more and different skills to navigate these situations.

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Key Takeaways

We offer the following practical steps and actions based on this research below (click to expand).

+ For Policymakers

INSIGHTS		ACTIONS
Refugee students face significant challenges in their post-graduation futures, including family and financial constraints, structural barriers such as discrimination, and isolation from upwardly mobile networks. Their educational and professional journeys are often connected to the employment trajectory of their parents.	➟	Provide needed funding and support to allow schools and after-school programs to engage in family-level planning, training, and networking related to post-graduation opportunities, including further education and employment.

+ For Educators

INSIGHTS		ACTIONS
Many teachers serving refugee and immigrant students in public schools are themselves young and new to the profession and have very different socio-economic backgrounds than their students. They often struggle to see and understand the structural barriers and challenges that their students deal with on a daily basis and might face upon graduation.	➟	Recruit more teachers who are themselves refugees and immigrants and who can, from personal experience and learning, help newcomer young people to navigate racial discrimination, xenophobia, and poverty.
Segregation by race, class, and migration status is the norm in schools across the United States. This limits opportunities for newcomers and Black and Brown students to build relationships that can help them navigate their education and post-education futures.	➟	Create opportunities for newly arrived students to interact with long-time residents and US-born peers—including, but not limited to, those who are white, affluent, and on upwardly-mobile trajectories—in order to build networks and multiple forms of social capital that can support post-school opportunities.
Refugee students often face barriers to their education and career trajectories, such as financial insecurity, housing insecurity, violence and discrimination, and unequal opportunity structures.	➟	Help refugee students to see structural inequalities in their places of resettlement and offer guidance on how to negotiate them, rather than assume they will cease to exist when students get good grades and graduate. Teachers must be better equipped to navigate, critique, and act on these issues and support their students to do the same.
Schools that host refugee students often suffer from more limited educational resources than students at wealthier schools, including limited access to a college counselor. This inequity in resource distribution results in few opportunities for refugees to learn about the college admissions process and feel supported.	➟	Provide students and families with information on college financial aid and outside mentorship. The college application process should mirror the collaborative, project-based learning style upon which schools serve refugee students and ensure their success, rather than emphasizing individual products and outcomes.

+ For Researchers

FURTHER RESEARCH IS NEEDED TO EXAMINE:
The post-graduation trajectories of refugee students who are taught by teachers who identify as refugees themselves, and who have similar backgrounds and experiences as that of their students; Evidence of educational outcomes from policies and practices that encourage relationships of care and implement critical transnational curricula; Policies regarding language of instruction and the use of mother tongue in classroom settings, both in the US and around the world; Examples of professional development that support teachers in confronting and responding to unequal opportunity structures and in addressing poverty, violence and discrimination, and xenophobia with their students.
Additional reading Critical transnational curriculum for immigrant and refugee students (2017)

Citation (APA): Dryden-Peterson, S. & Reddick, C. (2017). “When I am a President of Guinea”: Resettled Refugees Traversing Education in Search of a Future. European Education, 49(4): 253–275.

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