Twentieth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

Refugee studies have lately emerged as a focused area of research yet there is a vast knowledge gap vis-à-vis the integration experiences and socialisation processes of diversified refugees in educational settings. This research intends to study the diverse experiences of refugee children in an urban secondary school in Algeria. The research examines the nature and complexity of refugees’ experiences and their relevance to the integration processes in relation to their cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Highlighting these diverse perspectives is to understand ways that may facilitate integration amongst refugees within mainstream school classrooms. This study shall investigate the possibility of refugee story activities as a way to explore and deal with different issues of integration met by African refugees in the Algerian secondary school context. Accordingly, stories will be used to develop positive values that could ameliorate negativity caused by war and conflict refuge experiences. These stories can potentially develop their understanding of the key social concepts that can facilitate acceptance and integration among refugee communities first. This study invokes the theoretical framework provided by Jerome Bruner’s works on constructing the narrative through real life experiences. In practice, the idea is to voice children’ sense making of their own world and integrate it with good values to help them construct a positive narrative. Qualitative methods are integrated to investigate the readiness and acceptance of African refugee children to each other in an Algerian classroom.