Syrian Refugees and Higher Education: examining the current situation facing Syrian refugees as they aim to enter higher education

The aims of this project are to critically examine the current situation facing Syrian refugees as they aim to enter higher education, navigating a range of complicated and often contradictory systems at the local, national and international levels at the nexus of immigration and asylum policies on the one hand and education policies on the other. With widespread revolts across the Arab world since December 2010, the region is facing the largest refugee crisis in recent history, 78% of registered refugees are women and children (Kiwan 2015; 2016; UNHCR 2014). In the international humanitarian response to this refugee crisis, education has been relatively neglected, with a funding gap of 40% (Watkins, 2013). The scale of the Syrian refugee crisis, and the ensuing challenge of a mitigating a ‘lost generation’ of educated Syrians - in relation to humanitarian and educational policies and initiatives on the one hand and securitization discourses and rising populist right-wing reappraisals relating to social justice and minorities / the marginalized on the other, make this topic a central global challenge of our contemporary context.

This project will take a transnational, comparative and ethnographic approach in order to gain a unique and holistic insight from the perspectives of refugees themselves. This is intended to contribute to the sociological/ anthropological / political / educational and interdisciplinary literatures on refugees, as well as to inform policy and practice in national and international contexts. There is a substantive academic literature critiquing the construction of refugees as passive victims, as vulnerable and lacking agency, and as apolitical. Yet there are also public policy and media discourses constructing the ‘refugee’ as dangerous, situated within securitisation discourses. The project will be critically situated in relation to these literatures and policy discourses.
Original empirical research will be conducted consisting of two main parts:

i) mapping access to higher education in the surrounding region and internationally (Europe and US/Canada). The focus in the surrounding region will be on Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan as these countries are hosting the largest numbers of refugees, with significant impact on existing national infrastructure.

ii) examination of the lived experience of refugees, in order to understand how access to higher education is navigated in relation to a wide range of socio-political issues, including: a context of civil conflict, immigration and asylum policies and educational policies at national and international levels of the system, the rise of right-wing extremist discourses in the West, contextual educational issues including a lack of schooling - in many cases for several years as well as a lack of formal certification, racial and gendered discrimination, and individuals’ familial and personal social networks and resources.

PhD specification:
Required:
- Undergraduate degree in relevant social science field with the equivalent of 2.1.
- Evidence of engagement with and knowledge of refugees, forced migration and education.

Desirable:
- Social science research experience, including qualitative and quantitative research methods, ideally as part of a relevant MA/MSc programme.
- Experience and interest in interdisciplinary and comparative research.
- Critical interest in inter-relationship between theory, research, policy and practice.
- Knowledge of Arabic will be an advantage.

For more details on the scholarship, please visit our University webpage: http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/postgraduate/pgr/global-challenges-scholarship.aspx