Maligned Mobilities, Absences and Emergencies: Refugee Education in Australia

Refugees are seldom admired or applauded for their resolve and resilience, and their post and pre-migration experience rarely serves as the basis for the development of educational practice or policy solutions. Using a postcolonial theoretical framework this paper argues that while the maligned mobility and disparaged figure of the 'refugee' serves to establish and reconstruct exclusionary national identities, the same identities can be re-presented to offer new possibilities for inclusive education. Informed by southern epistemology and the sociology of absences and emergence (Boaventura de Sousa Santos, 2012. "Public Sphere and Epistemologies of the South", Africa Development. 37(1) 43-67; Boaventura de Sousa Santos, 1997 "Toward a Multicultural Conception of Human Rights", Zeitschrift fu¨r Rechtssoziologie, (10) 1-5), this paper discusses the anticipatory and emergent dimensions of refugee education. A focus on the pre- and post-settlement experience of refugees brings to light both their determination and strength as well as the complex and sometimes contradictory effect of racism and racialisation. Consideration of absences in relation to the anticipatory and emergent dimensions of education illuminate how inclusive education can serve as an instrument of resistance, transformation, and reconstruction. It shows how refugee mobility can open up possibilities for new forms of intelligibility, community and humanity.