Refugee education: Education for an unknowable future

Abstract

Conflict and displacement are increasingly protracted, requiring rethinking of refugee education as a long-term endeavor, connected not only to the idea of return but to the on-going nature of exile. In this essay, I examine how refugees conceptualize education and its role in creating certainty and mending the disjunctures of their trajectories as refugees. Through a portrait of one refugee teacher, the essay explores technical, curricular, and relational dimensions of refugee education that assist refugee students in preparing for unknowable futures.