Twentieth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

With growing numbers of young forced migrants displaced around the world, their participation in education is increasingly important for ensuring social cohesion and positive psychosocial impacts. While young refugees’ access to education has seen small increases in recent years, still 4 million youth under UNHCR’s care are out of school. The inclusion of migrant students in national education systems has been highlighted as a key concern among the international education community, and constitutes the basis of UNHCR’s Refugee Education 2030 strategy. However, the role of non-state actors in current inclusion efforts has been neglected in the academic and ‘grey’ literature, despite myriad grassroots, national and international organisations offering non-formal ‘bridging’ and ‘catch-up’ programmes - as well as logistical support and other additional services and activities - around the world. Now is the time, therefore, to investigate the role of these non-state actors in the implementation of refugee inclusion policies, and how their provision and approach contribute to young people’s goals and the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 4. This paper explores this question using findings from seven months of ethnographic fieldwork in urban educational spaces in Thessaloniki, Greece, completed for a DPhil project on young refugees’ (aged 15-24) educational agency. The paper aims to define non-state actors’ role in providing education for this marginalised group; document the variety of initiatives found around the city, and tensions which exist between these, the state and other humanitarian and development actors; and their impact on young refugees’ educational access and decision-making.