Many refugees are motivated to pursue higher education in host countries. However, they face a myriad of challenges in their trajectories in higher education systems. Some of these challenges include absence of alternative pathways, lack of academic language, complex admission procedures, difficulty of getting their qualifications recognised, financial barriers, discrimination, lack of information, and traumatic experiences. Moreover, many Western host countries have become increasingly hostile to refugees; and as a result, they have introduced restrictive policies to make the host countries as unfavorable as possible to refugees. Higher education institutions are operating in these environments with all the impacts the socio-political contexts might have on them. The purpose of this chapter is therefore to explore experiences of refugees in navigating higher education systems in these hostile environments. Refugees employ various forms of capital such as aspirational, social, and navigational capital to overcome challenges they encounter in higher education institutions.
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According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of forcibly displaced people reached more than 100 million in 2022 (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR], 2022a). Even though the vast majority of these people (around 83%) live in so-called Global South countries (UNHCR, 2022b), the arrival of non-European asylum-seekers and refugees1 in Western countries has put issues related to immigration and refugees high on political agendas in many host countries (Hernes, 2018). The politicisation of refugee issues begins even before the refugees’ arrival in Western countries2. For example, FitzGerald (2019), in his book titled Refuge beyond reach. How rich democracies repel asylum seekers, argues that Western countries pay the countries in the Global South to keep asylum seekers and refugees away from the North. The border wall across the US-Mexico border and the spillover effects of Trump’s immigration policies in the US, Australia’s migrant boats interception and detention of asylum seekers and refugees, and the toxic politics of migration in many European countries are epitomes of the unwelcoming environments awaiting asylum seekers and refugees (Crawley, 2021; FitzGerald, 2019). In some countries, “refugees and asylum seekers have become political pawns […] used to chase votes and sell newspapers” (Stevenson & Baker, 2018, p. 23), and even seen as “unwanted” immigrants (Boyd & Ly, 2021, p. 96). Several countries have also tightened their immigration policies some of which have resulted in restrictions on refugees’ access to social rights (Hagelund, 2020; Pinson & Arnot, 2010) in a bid to make the host countries “less attractive” to refugees (Parveen, 2020, p. 401).
These situations cannot be decoupled from the wider political contexts in several Western countries. Krastev (2017) argues that the immigration and refugee situations in recent times have led to at least three major events in many European countries. First, the demand for immigration control has led to Britain’s referendum on Europe. Second, the “refugee crisis” has brought back “the east-west divide in the EU”, and finally, the popularity of right-wing political parties has gain momentum (Krastev, 2017, p. 292). Right-wing political parties in many countries have capitalised on the so-called refugee crisis by proponing anti-refugee sentiments (Davis & Deole, 2017; Gessler & Hunger, 2022). The politicisations of issues related to refugee have impeded refugee resettlement programmes in many Western countries over the last decades (Solf & Rehberg, 2021). According to the UNHCR (2022c), even though the global resettlement needs reached 1.4 million in 2022, only 39,600 refugees were admitted to the destination countries, against 55,680 in 2018. On a country basis, in the US alone, the number of resettled refugees dropped to an all-time low in 2020-2021 with only 15,000 admissions compared with almost 85,000 in 2016 (Spiegel & Mhlanga, 2021). Nonetheless, the number of refugees in Western host countries should not be considered insignificant. For example, between 2015 and 2021, the United States (US), Canada, and the United Kingdom (UK) resettled 209,600, 65,200, and 26,500 refugees respectively (Solf & Rehberg, 2021). In addition to this, millions of asylum seekers arrive in many Western countries to apply for protection. Germany stands out from the European Union countries, if not from Western countries, by hosting more than 1.5 million asylum seekers and refugees since 2014 in absolute terms (Will et al., 2021). Irrespective of their arrival mode – be it through resettlement programmes or as asylum seekers – or their numbers, refugees in the Global North countries may encounter a new set of challenges including in higher education systems (Lambrechts, 2020). It is noteworthy that higher education is an integral part of basic human right (Gilchrist, 2018; Crea & McFarland, 2015). Hence, refugees – regardless of their social, political, cultural, and economic background – “deserve to be treated with dignity and respect” and to be given the opportunity to realise their potential through higher education (Morrice, 2022, p. 254; see also Lenette, 2016).