Disrupting the dominance of ‘linear pathways’: how institutional assumptions create ‘stuck places’ for refugee students’ transitions into higher education

ABSTRACT

Although journeys into and through higher education can be challenging for all learners, students from refugee backgrounds (SfRBs) face particular difficulties due to their culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds, and pre-settlement experiences of instability, insecurity, likely trauma and interrupted education. Drawing on a longitudinal, ethnographic exploration of the educational trajectories of a group adult SfRBs living in a regional Australian city, this article questions how ‘traditional’ understandings of transition – as linear, ritualised and predictable – can account for the complex lived experiences of SfRBs trying to access and participate in higher education studies in a resettlement context. Working with the anthropological notion of liminality (Turner 1969; Van Gennep 1960) and the notion of ‘stuck places’ (Lather 1998), we offer a more nuanced understanding of how ‘messy’ educational transitions are experienced, and how normative notions of what transition ‘should be’ act to mask these experiences, leaving SfRBs ‘stuck’ in the liminal space of becoming a student in higher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Australia
• transitions
• higher education
• adult students
• students from refugee backgrounds
• liminality
• stuck places
• linguistic and cultural diversity

Acknowledgments

This project was funded by the Australian Government’s Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT), grant (ID15-4758).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In the Australian policy context, these student groups are formally recognised as including Indigenous students, students from financially disadvantaged and/or rural or remote communities, students with disabilities, women in non-traditional areas, and students with Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) backgrounds. This category should arguably be extended to include other groups, such as first-in-family students, mature age students, students from refugee backgrounds, and students who have left out-of-home care.

2. The Australian Learning and Teaching Council (now defunct).

3. Intensive English Centres (IECs) are government-funded centres that generally offer up to 12 months of intensive English language tuition in some metropolitan areas. IECs are generally attached to a local school/group of schools.

4. It is important to note that we reject a conceptualisation of SfRBs as a homogenous group. The term SfRBs will be used throughout this article for ease, and to capture commonalities in experiences reported in the literature and in our collected data, underpinned by acknowledgement of their rich diversity and individuality.

5. This article focuses on the experiences of refugees rather than people seeking asylum (for discussion in the higher education context, see Hirsch and Maylea 2016; White 2017). However, we consider the ideas and issues discussed here to be of great significance to people seeking asylum who are able to access Australian higher education through a scholarship or fee waiver scheme (see Hartley et al. 2018).

6. Enabling education offers free ‘alternative entry’ programs to Australian students seeking to access higher education (see Baker and Irwin 2015 for an overview).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Office for Learning and Teaching [ID15-4758]

Notes on contributors

Sally Baker

Sally Baker is a Lecturer in the School of Education and the Education ‘Focal Point’ for the Forced Migration Research Network at The University of New South Wales. Sally’s teaching and research interests centre on language, literacies, transition and equity in higher education, particularly with regard to culturally and linguistically diverse students, and refugee students in particular. Sally is the co-chair of the national Refugee Education Special Interest Group for/with students from refugee backgrounds, supported by the Refugee Council of Australia (http://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/ourwork/educationsigmedia/)

Evonne Irwin

Evonne Irwin is an Associate Lecturer: Humanities & Online Enabling Education with the English Language and Foundation Studies Centre at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She has worked as an English language practitioner since 2003 in the vocational and higher education sectors and is now involved in developing online and blended curricula for enabling education students. Her research explores the transitions of students from refugee backgrounds into and through higher education as well as student and staff experiences of online education. Evonne is currently undertaking PhD research which seeks to examine the experiences of higher education staff working in ‘unbounded’ and ‘blended’ roles.