With the worldwide population of refugees reaching crisis levels,Footnote1 attention to refugees and asylum seekers has become increasingly politicised internationally. This politicisation was the impetus for this investigation of education, inclusion and belonging. We sought input from academic and community perspectives with the explicit aim of contributing to knowledge and dialogue about these groups. Education and social connection can be easily overlooked in the larger context of discourses and challenges surrounding these groups. This special issue contributes narratives of identity, and challenges cultural norms available to, and created by young people. Maintaining connection to community and country of origin while settling into new contexts is of particular interest here and considering what helps and hinders belonging was a key point of this investigation.
Three main aspects were identified in the call for papers for this issue, which served as a provocation for the authors:
How these discourses impact upon engagement and success in education as well as belonging in everyday spaces;
Inclusion of these young people in education systems; and
How young people perceive and negotiate negative discourses of Islamophobia and racism.
Negative media stereotyping and vilification of particular groups and systemic racism are recurring themes in this special issue. Some of the articles focus on the impacts of these negative narratives on education prospects for young people from culturally and linguistically diverse and refugee backgrounds. Others focus on ways that communities resist and maintain their sense of identity in the face of these challenges. Whilst there is an emphasis in this issue on the challenges of exclusion, some authors draw attention to community efforts that seek solutions. This issue celebrates such initiatives as they provide models of positive and inclusive practices. As a whole, this issue makes the case for greater awareness and focused action regarding the complex educational issues raised.
Loosely organised into three sections reflecting the provocations above, the first section examines discourses of engagement and success in education. The paper by Anna Hickey-Moody, Arts Practice as Method, Urban Spaces and Intra-Active Faiths, outlines a significant programme for change that focuses on the development of a sense of belonging and self-worth in children. She examines how art facilitates comment on complex social issues, beginning with young children. Employing her theory of affective pedagogy, she investigates an arts-based child and youth interfaith research programme that challenges everyday discourses of Islamophobia and racism.
The second paper by Alison Baker, Christopher Sonn, David Nyuol Vincent and Fletcher Curnow is entitled, ‘I Haven’t Lost Hope of Reaching Out … ’: Exposing Racism in Sport by Elevating Counternarratives. This story of a soccer team’s experience of racism is told from different vantage points. The article challenges the widely held view that in Australia sport provides a pathway to belonging and acceptance.
The third article in this section, At Home, Song and Fika – Portraits of Swedish Choral Initiatives Amidst the Refugee Crisis, by André de Quadros and Kinh T. Vu examines the purpose and experience of resettled refugees enrolled in Swedish community choirs. Their article poses the question: ‘Does inculcation into Swedish singing culture help to build a more inclusive and harmonious society or merely promote greater cultural assimilation?’
The second section of this special issue investigates how these young people are included in education systems. In his article, The Public Positioning of Refugees in the Quasi-Education Market: Linking Mediascapes and Social Geographies of Schooling, Joel Windle argues that media vilification of culturally diverse communities living in particular areas impacts strongly on parental choice of school which in turn impacts on school performance. Drawing together several discourses, he questions how it is that socially exclusive schools are funded at double the rate of those who teach refugee-background students.
This is followed by Julie White’s article, The Banality of Exclusion in Australian Universities, that investigates the systematic and deliberate exclusion from higher education of young people who have not yet been assessed as refugees and the context in which this practice occurs. The national identity myth of the ‘fair go’ is juxtaposed with the manipulative discourse promulgated by politicians and the bureaucracy. Hannah Arendt’s theory of the banality of evil is employed to examine the harsh policy environment towards those seeking asylum and actively exclusionary practices in Australian education.
The final section of this special issue considers how young people perceive and negotiate negative discourses of Islamophobia and racism. In the first article here Stealing Meanings – Does Measuring Quality in the Arts Mean Imposing Cultural Values? Dave Kelman examines the implicit cultural values in ‘quality’ assessment metrics used in community art contexts. He argues that such attempts at measurement of the ‘intrinsic value’ of culturally and linguistically diverse young art makers ignore the complexities and nuance of the work’s social context and thereby distorts its meaning.
Following this, Lutife Ali and Christopher Sonn’s article, Strategies of Resistance to Anti-Islamic Representations Among Australian Muslim Women: An Intersectional Approach, questions the anti-Islamic vilification discourses of unassimilable veiled women. Reporting on diverse challenges and responses that contest these hegemonic representations, this article also discusses how identity negotiations of minority groups occur and how viewpoints are informed by intersecting power and social locations including race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality.
The final article in this third section Positioning Young Refugees in Australia: Media Discourse and Social Exclusion by Fiona Macdonald examines how sensationalist media vilification impacts on community perceptions about gangs, violence and young men from specific cultural groups. Her investigation focuses on the overlapping dimensions of spatial, relational and socio-political exclusion within one urban area.
Notes
1 See UNHCR Figures at a Glance for further details http://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html