Toward Cognitive and Temporal Mobility: Language Considerations in Refugee Education

Abstract

‘What language?’ Over the past two decades of work in the field of refugee education, this is the question most asked in conversations with parents, students, teachers, government officials, policymakers, in local, national, and global decision-making spaces. What language will I use to speak with my teacher? What language will enable me to have opportunities in the future? What languages will support me in maintaining relationships of love and care? What language will allow for lives here or there, or here and there? For all actors, this question – ‘What language?’ – reflects personal and political experiences and preoccupations, with responses to the question tied to reverberating implications for lives now and for the future. In his essay, Suresh Canagarajah cautions us away from Eurocentric conceptions of migration and proposes a model that links spatial, social, and geographic mobilities with implications for language pedagogies. I discuss two additional mobilities that emerge through our work on refugee education, which also have broad relevance for what, how, and why children and young people learn, including as related to language in education. They are cognitive mobility and temporal mobility. Aspirations for these mobilities emerge from refugee young people’s experiences of uncertainty, placemaking, and future-building. I explore each of these three themes in turn after some brief background on refugee education vis-à-vis language.