Social inclusion of refugees is more than granting access to a university: a brief message to academic leaders in host countries

ABSTRACT

The high number of displaced people in the world has led to many challenges for refugees, including the interruption of their academic careers. This, coupled with anti-refugee rhetoric and strict immigration and integration policies in host countries, has exacerbated the exclusion of refugees from academia. Higher education institutions have special responsibilities to realise the social inclusion of minorities, including refugees. While the entire academic community can play a role, the onus is primarily on academic leaders such as chancellors, rectors, deans, and heads of departments, and their deputies to create a genuinely inclusive academic environment. These key figures should at least realise that granting access is only one step in realising the social inclusion of refugees into higher education. In this commentary, I highlight some actions academic leaders can take to facilitate the social inclusion of refugees into academia.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic leaders
• higher education
• refugees
• social inclusion

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Notes on contributors

Juhar Yasin Abamosa

Juhar Yasin Abamosa is an associate professor at Department of Pedagogy, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences in Norway. His research interests include exploring the role of various institutions and policies in hindering or facilitating the social inclusion of refugees into higher education in Western host countries, social inequalities created and sustained or reproduced through unjust social systems and unequal power relationships, equity in educational opportunities to disadvantaged groups such as refugees, hidden – albeit deliberate – prejudices that result in exclusion of refugees from boundaries of opportunities in Western host nations, deskilling of non-Western refugees, and institutional racism.