Refugees in Europe: Educational policies and practices as spaces of hospitality?

This special issue brings together papers exploring how the influx and resettlement of refugees challenge European educational spaces. The dramatic increase of refugees resettling in Europe in 2015 generated fierce political and public debates across the continent, with polarized stances on hospitality and solidarity versus hostility and exclusion becoming evident. For this special issue we invited educational researchers to engage with these social and political discourses and to address how European education can respond to refugees’ resettlement and related social tensions. Documenting some of these early responses within educational policy and practice, this special issue aims to generate further discussions and engaged research on the ways in which educational policies and practice could operate as spaces of hospitality.

‘We need to talk about Europe’: A conference initiative for academic engagement on refugees and education

By late August 2015 more than 1000 refugees waiting to travel towards Austria were stranded at the Budapest Keleti Railway Station, as the Hungarian authorities held back those who could not present valid identity documents. In early September, thousands of refugees embarked on a march towards the Austrian border. On the 5th of September, the Austrian chancellor issued a statement that Austria would assist in transferring refugees to Germany and, subsequently, the Hungarian government transported the refugees to the Austrian border. Most refugees continued their journeys to Germany, where chancellor Angela Merkel had claimed to welcome refugees. By mid-September, a modification of the Hungarian Criminal Code stated that crossing the barbed wire fence at the border, intended to block and divert the Western Balkan migration route, had become a criminal offence. At the same time, Austria strengthened its border controls on its Hungarian border. Thereafter, major migration routes through the Balkans have avoided the territory of Hungary.

In early September, 3000 participants of the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) came to Budapest. Conference participants, as they arrived by air or train, gradually realized they had become unwanted witnesses of a humanitarian crisis. The social questions generated by the influx of refugees, the implications of heavy expenses or potential human losses, filled academics attending the conference with anxiety. This condition prompted a boisterous and impulsive conference atmosphere, in which keynotes and network programs were modified to respond to the political events as well as to the clear demand on behalf of a large number of participants to engage with the ongoing condition. Initial hesitation, also due to delicate aspects of inner organizational politics, was soon swept away by the strong and broad bottom-up activity of conference participants and external organizations. Perhaps the strongest of these was the setting-up of a discussion platform as an integral part of the conference agenda, with the aim of preparing a collective statement on behalf of the conference participants. The main organizers argued that,

If we do not take seriously the plight of the large numbers of refugees and of those suffering the consequences of ‘our’ policies and discourses, we are not taking seriously the role of the education researcher in Europe. Indeed, if education is a particular way of understanding the old, welcoming the new and the strangers, then the way we deal with refugees is a European issue and a pressing common concern for a European Conference on Educational Research. ¹

The forum was driven by a strong desire to act collectively as public intellectuals and engaged academics. Participants discussed the possible ways to relate to the ongoing refugee crisis, including collective action, as well as the ways in which academics could engage with the migration crisis at their home universities. The forum’s statement urged academics to actively engage with amplifying the voices of refugees and asylum seekers and to challenge, rework, and counter hostile public and political discourses in relation to the migration crisis. Furthermore, the document, which was later adopted by the European Educational Research Association (EERA) Council, emphasized the importance of the presence of refugee educators in academic collaborations and the organized support for refugee students. This special issue is one of the outcomes of this initiative: ‘We need to talk about Europe!’. It demonstrates how the social and political tensions developed into scholarly reflection and invoked a sense of social responsibility.

Two ECER conferences have taken place further to this initial 2015 initiative. It therefore seems timely to examine how the research community gathering around the European Education Research Association has responded to the refugee crisis. In the following, we briefly review how the theme of refugees or asylum seekers featured on the conference agenda in the subsequent two annual conferences. ² In the 2016 and 2017 ECER conferences, 46 presentations and 105 contributors in total directly addressed educational issues related to newly-arriving refugees and asylum seekers in Europe. ³ In this small sample, contributions reflected the extent to which European countries were exposed to the migrant influx and their political stances on accommodating refugees. Furthermore, several joint network initiatives prove that the theme has sparked a spirit of collaboration and partnership across networks. The number of proposals, joint sessions, and symposiums has been increasing in the last two years. It seems that the networks focusing on the topics of ‘Inclusive Education, Policy Studies and Politics of Education’, and ‘Innovative Intercultural Learning Environments’ were highly active in organizing symposia or roundtables on this theme. ⁴ Following the conference, an additional seminar was organized by the Inclusive Education network in November 2016 in Italy. ⁵

Whereas discussions at the 2015 conference focused on the role of engaged academics, in 2016 the scientific gaze seems to have shifted to the initial institutional and policy responses at various levels, stages, and sites of the educational system. In 2017, contributions explored unfolding professional and academic discourses (NW20–23), and professional discomfort and its effect on migrant families’ experiences (NW17, NW7). New aspects, reflecting discussions about rural regions (NW19), or the digital life-worlds of unaccompanied migrant children (NW6), equally emerged. In line with the spirit of the 2015 statements, recent interest in the professional development of teachers with refugee backgrounds has also raised important questions (NW10). Taken together, from the perspective of emergent services (NW4), mainstream welcoming (NW09), or non-formal responses (NW30), academics have addressed the role of educational practices with a clear emphasis on refugees’ rights and hospitality. Conference papers prototypically addressed the unpreparedness of the general public, VET, and tertiary education systems to accommodate the needs of migrant and refugee children, as well as the challenges related to the labour market integration of young adult refugees. Clearly, these elaborations in network themes or individual presentations addressed political discourses to only a limited extent; rather, they mostly reflected educational practice and theory-oriented approaches. Moreover, the majority of presentations explored the issue of refugees and education in the context of the nation state. Only time will tell whether or not the conference sessions generated fruitful collaborations across nations and research cultures. To date, we know about one research project which grew out from a Council invited panel at the 2016 conference. ⁶

This overview indicates how the theme of refugees and education became solidly embedded within the ECER-conferences. However, the agenda-setting by engaged academics was necessary for the recognition of the issue within the academic field. Following its initial hesitation, the Council endorsed network activities focusing on academic public engagement and the transformation of education in response to the ‘refugee crisis’. Thus, the recognition of the intense bottom-up initiative developed into firm institutional support at many levels of the European Educational Research Association.

In conclusion, academic engagement with the arrival of refugees in European educational spaces has gradually developed and grown, reflecting a clear interest on the impetus, meaning and implications of the dynamics of hospitality and hostility towards refugees in educational contexts.

Educational spaces as spaces of hospitality?

Since 2015, social and political tensions regarding refugees’ arrival, resettlement, or social integration have neither eased nor disappeared across Europe. On the contrary, tensions have been exacerbated. With the rise of populist politics and the strengthening of social polarization in the aftermath of the economic crisis, political support for discourses of exclusion or ostracism has grown. Public concern with the role of refugees and immigrants in reducing economic privilege, as well as a series of terrorist attacks, have enhanced a climate of scrutiny, distrust, and exclusion of refugee communities. These current social dynamics across Europe further raise questions on the role of educational research and practice in relation to polarized positions of solidarity versus exclusion towards refugees. From the perspective of these current predicaments across the European space, engaging with the arrival of refugees invites a shared reflection in education research about how to understand the role of research and practice in relation to polarized positions of solidarity versus exclusion in encountering refugees. In times of polarized narratives on the figure of the refugee in the European space, how can educational research and practice create a space that invites refugee voices? What is the role of educational practice and research in engaging with a broader societal space in which conflicting discourses of welcoming and exclusion increasingly coexist?

We call upon Jacques Derrida’s thoughts on hospitality to approach these questions and to frame this special issue. In his reflective argument, Derrida delineates how the tension between hospitality and the failure of hospitality is at the heart of any response to welcoming the foreigner. Consequently, he argues, in providing a space of welcoming, the host faces the responsibility of engaging with this tension.

Derrida used the figure of the stranger, the refugee, as a starting point to reflect on the encounter with the ‘other’ and the radical obligation of hospitality towards this other (Derrida, 1999, 2001; Derrida and Dufourmantelle, 2000). This obligation entails the unlimited, unconditional ethical responsibility to welcome the other, the obligation of hospitality without restriction, ‘without asking of them either reciprocity (entering into a pact) or even their names’ (Derrida, 2000: 25). The foreigner’s call for a home confronts us with the imperative to respond, to open our world, to welcome, and to give a place to the unknown one, in a hospitable response which is unlimited in its space of welcoming. This ethical imperative implies that the host must engage in a concrete practice of hospitality. Derrida emphasizes that any response to the ethical call of the stranger or any performance of hospitality can but fall short of the imperative of absolute hospitality. In this translation process, Derrida argues: ‘the necessity, for the host […] of choosing, electing, filtering, selecting their invitees, visitors, or guests, those to whom they decide to grant […] hospitality’ (Derrida, 2000: 55). According to Derrida, the process of selecting or filtering guests is an inherent part of the practice of hospitality, highlighting the paradox involved in ‘no hospitality without sovereignty of oneself in one’s home’. In order to be hospitable, one has to declare oneself a sovereign owner:

(t)o dare to say welcome is perhaps to insinuate that one is at home here, that one knows what it means to be at home, and that at home one receives, invites, or offers hospitality, thus appropriating a space for oneself, a space to welcome [accueillir] the other. (Derrida, 1999: 15–16).

Here, the host not only appropriates the identity of the host, but also exercises the host’s power. At this point, Derrida explicitly links the practice of hospitality to violence: ‘[..] sovereignty can only be exercised by [..] excluding and doing violence’ (Derrida, 2000: 55). In its inherent conditionality of practice, every act of hospitality becomes an act of violence. Derrida conceptualizes hospitality as an aporia (ancient Greek: ἀπορία; impasse; doubt; confusion). Acts of pure, absolute hospitality are impossible: they encapsulate the paradoxical tension of being conditional while carrying the ethical imperative of unconditionality. The shadow of violence is therefore cast over every practice of hospitality.

Derrida articulates this aporia at the level of the host’s encounter with the stranger and equally identifies how this tension marks nation states’ responses and institutionalized practices in relation to the arrival of the stranger. Here, the inevitable presence of violence in any practice of hospitality refers to the translation of the unconditional law of hospitality into concrete laws and regulations of hospitality: ‘In order to be what it is, the law thus needs the laws, which, however, deny it, or at any rate threaten it, sometimes corrupt or pervert it’ (Derrida, 2000: 79). The ethical law of unconditional welcoming necessitates its performance in concrete acts of hospitality, while at the same time these conditional performances of hospitality are continuously drawn towards the ethical imperative. At the same time, however, they are in constant tension as they imply and exclude each other: ‘They incorporate one another at the moment of excluding one another, they are dissociated at the moment of enveloping one another’ (Derrida, 2000: 81). This paradox of hospitality, of being at the same time the unconditional law (singular) and the conditional laws (plural) of hospitality, cannot be resolved due to the tension between the imperative and practice of hospitality. This, according to Derrida, is the core of concrete practices of hospitality: the host’s response to the foreigner’s call resides precisely within the tension between the ethical law and actual laws. Migration policies, security regulations, and other forms of institutionalized practices are produced through processes of translating the unlimited ethical imperative to practices of conditional hospitality.

Overview of the contributions

Jacques Derrida’s reflection on hospitality provides a perspective in framing the articles comprising this special issue. Evoking Derrida’s emphasis on the aporia of both welcoming and the failure of welcoming, contributions address the complexity of the imperative of hospitality towards refugees’ arrival in European educational spaces. Moving beyond documenting how educational responses engage with larger social tensions between welcoming and excluding refugees, the contributions reflect on how educational responses may be imbued themselves with aporetic dynamics of the coexistence of inclusion and exclusion.

The special issue brings together reflections on educational policy and practice in both formal and non-formal education, revolving around refugees resettlement and their educational and social trajectories. In each contribution, the authors provide an account of how educational policies or practices at different levels open spaces of welcoming refugees’ voices, while at the same time implying potential dynamics of exclusion. The issue thus attempts to portray the intense, fruitful scholarly discussion in the field generated by the very nature of hospitality as described by Derrida.

In the opening article, Willems and Vernimmen set the stage for the thematic issue with an incisive summary of legal treaties regulating the right to education for refugees, exploring the legal provisions which regulate refugees’ access to education in European resettlement countries. Reviewing the case law and legal literature, the authors raise critical questions about refugees’ access to education and pinpoint how the tension between hospitality and the failure of hospitality is involved in legal frameworks and in corresponding national policy implementations. Refugees’ access to education in host societies is legally framed by international treaties as a human rights’ obligation. At the same time, the right to education is intertwined with individual social, economic and cultural rights, and it is dependent on the allocated state budgets. The authors highlight that, despite human right obligations in educational matters, nation states operate within spaces of varying implementation and interpretation which largely depend on domestic regulations and national constitution. The authors develop their argument further by giving close attendion to the implication of tertiary education fees on access, refugees’ right to education in their native language, and the legal context of placing refugee children and youth in separate classes prior to their integration into mainstream classrooms.

Adopting a Foucauldian and post-structural feminist lens, Kurki, Masoud, Niemi and Brunila explore the way in which the education of immigrants is increasingly shaped by the neoliberal, market-oriented logics of education services in Finland. Social integration and employment training courses for immigrants have recently been outsourced to the Finnish private sector. As a result, the employment training for adult immigrants registered as jobseekers and receiving social benefits is increasingly dominated by innovation and business purposes. This article highlights how, in the policy context of market-oriented policies and practices, the tasks of teachers – whose work is fundamentally dependent on project funding – become similar to those of consultants and coaches. The analysis addresses how immigrant students are expected to perform the skills and attitudes of active and responsible jobseekers. Thus, the paper articulates how neoliberal discourses promoted by market-oriented education policies and integration practices have crucially reframed the subjectivities of teachers and immigrants. In this discursive framing, immigrant subjectivities are rendered very similarly to the precarious and individualized subjectivities of neoliberal jobseekers.

In their contribution, Kontowski and Leitsberger reflect on the capability, willingness, and execution of state-provided provision and support for refugees in the higher educational sector. The paper explores how hospitality is shaped within higher education in Austria and Poland, where anti-refugee sentiments are widespread. The discussion outlines how emerging state policies and sector-initiated immediate support prioritized hospitable practices of coordination and transparency in light of economic, humanitarian or legal considerations. At the same time, the contribution also delineates the challenges of institutionalizing support in both countries. For example, the Polish case documents an initial series of solidarity declarations which were not institutionalized further due to a lack of experience, public awareness, and governmental coordination. Based on the lessons of these Austrian and Polish cases, the paper develops some directions for potential ways in which civic or non-governmental practices of hospitality may lead to meaningful administrative solutions which do not frame the integration of refugees as ‘a crisis to be solved and rebalanced’ but rather as a ‘new reality that requires [a] future oriented approach’.

The contribution by Atanasoska & Proyer is concerned with the experience of young refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq as they enter the Austrian education system, through an analysis based on individual and focus-group interviews with young refugees about their past educational transitions and future aspirations. The authors highlight that the compulsory age limit draws a major divisive line in the educational trajectories and possibilities of young refugees. The interviews suggest that refugees scarcely access German language tutoring at school and, following the refugee influx of 2015, it has become a general practice to separate them into segregated catch-up classes. In the competitive Austrian secondary school system, young refugees over the age of 15 are likely to end up in adult education courses where they can access German classes; but, without counselling and career guidance, their hopes of re-engaging in mainstream secondary and further education quickly fade away. The accounts of young refugees suggest that the rigid Austrian education system has not been able to respond to the challenge of integrating these individuals, and hence it is failing to offer formal educational futures either to non-German speakers or to young people with irregular educational pathways. Educational practices bound to respond to refugees’ arrival within the educational system thus operate as vehicles of exclusion and de-skilling

The contribution by Terhart and von Dewitz focuses on refugee children’s school trajectories. Starting from the prevalent assumption on the central role of schooling in refugee children’s linguistic and social integration, the article explores micro-dynamics of inclusion of exclusion as enacted by the school structure and classroom practice. Here, the analysis highlights how the organizational structure of refugees’ reception in schools is deeply imbued with dynamics of enabling, or disabling, refugee children’s social participation. In particular, the ethnographical analysis is framed by a multilayered theoretical perspective on exclusion and inclusion, with a special focus on the regulatory impact of social structures and their normalization of exclusion. The detailed description explores an interactive sequence between a teacher and a class of newcomers in which the teacher’s didactical intervention aims, but fails, to support an open appreciation of multilingualism in classroom dynamics. Here, the authors show how integrated classes do not necessarily guarantee inclusion, while exclusive practices that occur are not necessarily intertwined with segregated institutional settings. Indeed, the analysis of micro-interactions in a segregated class for newcomers highlights the coexistence of inclusive and exclusive educational practices, calling for an understanding of the intricate, multidimensional interconnection of dimensions of exclusion and inclusion both within the institutional structure and classroom interactions.

Exploring the role of non-formal educational scenes in emergent forms of European civility and the transnational forms of belonging and citizenship, the contribution by Batsleer, Andersson, Liljeholm Hansson, Lütgens, Mengilli, Pais, Pohl and Wissö shows how microspheres of public education shape critical learning and civic agency. The paper explores non-formal educational practices in three urban contexts in Sweden, Germany and the UK, illustrating how regrouping of responses in basic human needs and recognition, as well as switching the roles of helper and beneficiary, can create an atmosphere within which further exchange and partnership is possible. The authors reflect on the micro-politics of ‘small, close to home’ spaces as places of learning and engagement, emphasizing how this micropolitical character generates possibilities of restoring safety and complex experiences of mutuality. In these cases, a shared concern consists of the acknowledgement and support of ‘close to home’ non-formal educational initiatives and the symbolical reconstitution of refugees as host and subject of democratic conversation.

In the context of the current European predicament, this collection of contributions provides an account of how educational policy and practice have been mobilized in response to refugees’ resettlement within European borders. They open a view on how educational provisions and policies have developed responses to refugees’ resettlement across national contexts and in diverse sites of formal and non-formal education. Beyond the level of the context of schools, the articles discuss the challenges of engaging with broader social tensions and polarization, by shifting focuses on refugees’ linguistic or economic integration, shaping new spaces of social safety, mobilizing civic agency, and counteracting social dynamics of exclusion. Furthermore, the collection pinpoints that these educational responses may not only create spaces of welcoming refugees, but also subtly and implicitly reiterate broader social tensions between the welcoming and the exclusion of refugees. This may be mediated by logics of marketization and instrumentalization, broader processes of institutional selection, and the reluctance to give systemic, institutional responses to initiatives of solidarity to refugees; or enacted by micro-processes of relational interactions which fail to recognize refugees’ dreams, histories and cultural universe. Hence, educational policies and practices operate as spaces that may be both alleviating or strengthening tensions between welcoming and exclusion, between hospitality and the failure of hospitality.

This perspective on co-existing dynamics of welcoming and exclusion invites an academic reflection on academic engagement with refugees, which moves beyond documenting refugees’ plight to hospitality, and explores how these forms of educational responses may become imbued with fragments of reiterating the failure of hospitality. Here, academic responsibility extends into a continuous sensitivity to and reflection on how teaching and learning can create spaces of hospitality and, equally, to being attentive to when and how practices of hospitality may become imbued with fragments of exclusion. Moving beyond the recognition of tensions of hospitality, engaged research should provide tools for tackling these tensions.

The theme of the forthcoming annual ECER-conference in September 2018, in Bolzano, Italy, and its particular emphasis on educational provisions for migrant and refugee groups, calls for a furthering of academic engagement with these questions. ⁷ The conference may play a pivotal role in consolidating previous academic initiatives. As the contributions compiled in this special issue indicate, extending the reach of such academic involvement implies a reflection on the meaning of active academic engagement and its role in addressing the silencing and oppression of refugees’ voices within social and educational spaces. In refugees’ life histories, creating spaces for their voices and supporting a shared understanding of the impetus and meaning of welcoming and exclusion may provide a means of recognition in the context of collective violence and exile.