Linda Morrice

Lifelong learning and the social integration of refugees in the UK: the significance of social capital

In response to growing population movements the UK Government has introduced a number of measures designed to facilitate the social inclusion and integration of refugees into UK society. This paper explores some of the lifelong learning issues for refugees and argues that the current discourse of social inclusion and exclusion gives rise to narrow and prescriptive learning opportunities which fail to address the barriers facing refugees in the UK. Using the concept of social capital as an explanatory framework, I will argue that for refugees to become integrated and useful members of society requires a shift away from the present focus on formal, individualised education provision to a greater recognition of informal and social learning opportunities.

Learning and Refugees: Recognizing the Darker Side of Transformative Learning

Learning is generally viewed as a positive process bringing benefits to the individual, leading to growth and self-development. But is this always the case? This article draws on empirical research with refugees and considers the processes of transforming experience and learning that accompanies transition to life in the United Kingdom. I will argue for the importance of social context and nonformal learning, and suggest that models and theories based on transformative learning that ignore context provide only a partial and distorted picture of the learning and identity processes at work for this particular group of immigrants. There is a complexity and depth to the learning that they experience, which calls for an enlarged concept of learning and its potential outcomes.

Journeys into Higher Education: the case of refugees in the UK

Higher education (HE) is one of the routes that refugees who come to the UK from professional and highly educated backgrounds can re-establish their lives and professional identities. This research follows up a group of such refugees who were on a programme designed to support refugees gain access to HE or appropriate employment. The findings highlight the challenges facing the group over the three-year period since the course finished, and the long and often complicated journey into HE. The paper uses Bourdieus concepts of field, capital and habitus to theorise the experiences of the refugees. It is suggested that an understanding of HE and the UK employment market as cultural fields enables a shift of focus away from refugees as ‘deficient’ and instead encourages reflection upon what these fields fail to give value to or recognise.

Refugees in higher education: boundaries of belonging and recognition, stigma and exclusion

For highly educated refugee professionals who flee to the UK, gaining a university qualification is one of the key strategies which can be used to re-establish a professional identity and find employment, and yet little is known about their experiences in higher education. This article utilises Bourdieu’s framework of field, capital and habitus to conceptualise what happens to this group of migrants as they move across social space, and as they enter and move through university. By juxtaposing four case studies it draws out the diversity and commonalities in experience, and how pre- and post-migratory experiences shape the encounter with higher education. The article serves as a reminder against over-generalising or universalising the needs of refugee students. It underlines the affective dimension of being a refugee and the material realities of global inequality and forced migration which shape and mark refugee habitus.

Cultural values, moral sentiments and the fashioning of gendered migrant identities

ABSTRACT The promotion of British cultural values to which all citizens can and should sign up to has taken on unprecedented urgency and momentum in political and public discourses. This paper explores the meanings and values attached to contemporary forms of Britishness from the perspective of migrant refugee women, and outlines the conflicting interpretations and expectations of different projects of feminine citizenship. Drawing on empirical research it suggests that gendered migrant identities and values are formed and performed in relation to real and imagined understanding of British (white) heterosexual women and can be seen, at least in part, as asserting moral value and distinctiveness. The women invoked migrant cultural pride in the form of caring, community, close family ties and heterosexuality to claim recognition and resist the lack of moral value ascribed to migrant identities. However, this is achieved through a re-inscription of gender identities in which heterosexuality and sexual restraint become technologies of regulation and control.

British citizenship, gender and migration: the containment of cultural differences and the stratification of belonging

Abstract Debates about integration, British values and identity, who can belong and who can become a citizen, have been fuelled by concerns about growing cultural diversity in the United Kingdom. To promote a shared sense of national identity and claim a universal and normative citizen subject, the UK government, along with many other western nations, has introduced compulsory citizenship and language testing. This article traces and critiques the evolution of the British citizenship test since its introduction in 2005 and argues that the regime fails to recognise the gendered and segmented nature of migration, and functions as a silent and largely invisible mechanism of civic stratification and control. Drawing on Home Office data, it is argued that citizenship testing enables the government to cherry pick migrants who conform to an idealised citizen subject, while containing cultural difference by excluding others, particularly women, who are tolerated but remain symbolic non-citizens.

Transnational migration, everyday pedagogies and cultural destabilization

Morrice argues that transnational migration is a mundane and inevitable part of living in our globalised world, and that it requires more creative pedagogical understandings and responses than currently offered. The turn to values and identity in migration and integration debates has co-opted lifelong learning, in the form of language and citizenship education, to support and manage the immigration priorities of nation states. Through an exploration of transnationalism and the concept of transnational spaces, an alternative framing is offered which recognises the ongoing and inevitable re-inscription of national, cultural and individual identities. It is suggested that migration gives rise to an everyday pedagogy of spontaneous, embodied and unpredictable learning. Broad pointers to the role of the educator and researcher in exploring and shaping these processes are offered.

Abyssal lines and cartographies of exclusion in migration and education: towards a reimagining

ABSTRACT Educational institutions across the Western world, from schools through to universities, are increasingly being drawn into highly ideological spaces of immigration control, integration and securitisation. This paper outlines the complex contours of this ‘education-migration nexus’ and contributes to the critique of the way that education is becoming yoked to different political and social agendas. It also seeks to offer an analysis of the way in which the experiences, knowledges and practices of those from non-Western contexts become disqualified and rendered non-existent. Drawing on the work of Boaventura de Sousa Santos, I develop a postcolonial analysis which exposes the partial and distorted framing of migration, migrants and integration, a framing which gives rise to the current highly restrictive role of education. The paper concludes with a reimagined conceptualisation and suggests a draft agenda for education and migration studies. This calls for a more dynamic understanding of education which is open and flexible and prepared to enter into dialogue between different knowledges and practices, rather than seeking only to assimilate and construct learners according to some predetermined image.

Migration, adult education and learning

This is the editorial to introduce the Special issue on Migration, Adult Education and Learning; therefore an abstract is not required. Order of Authors: Linda Morrice