Editorial: Refugee education: Challenging stereotypes and deficiency approaches

Blog post Part of special issue: Refugee education: Challenging stereotypes and deficiency approaches

Editorial: Refugee education: Challenging stereotypes and deficiency approaches

Joanna McIntyre, Professor in Education at University of Nottingham Wayne Veck, Professor of Education at University of Winchester 15 Jun 2026

This ��ϲ�� Blog Special Issue grows out of the distinct yet shared lived experiences of its authors. Each of us has witnessed how, across the UK and Europe, refugee education is too often shaped by narratives that narrow rather than recognise displaced young people. We have seen how even well‑intentioned initiatives can drift into deficit frames, where students are encountered first through lenses that encompass only deficiencies, such as trauma, language gaps and cultural ‘differences’. By bringing our voices together, we hope to unsettle these diminishing habits of thought. Collectively, these seven blog posts ask what it might mean to take refugee students’ needs seriously – not by sorting or labelling them, but by attending to the conditions in which they can flourish as full members of educational communities.

What distinguishes and unifies this collection is its shared refusal of familiar and delimiting discourses about displaced persons and their education. Here, belonging is not a feeling to be measured but something made real in everyday acts of inclusion and welcome. Seen in this light, refugee education becomes a practice of developing counters to pervasive and systemic racism and, more positively, cultivating spaces where displaced young learners can emerge as the people they are becoming rather than the stereotypes they have been reduced to. To take refugee students’ needs seriously is to shift attention away from individualised, specialist interventions and towards reimagining the everyday structures and cultures that make genuine participation possible. In this collection, we build on literature (such as ; ; ) which supports the collective call in this special issue for culturally responsive pedagogy that is rooted in viewing displaced learners through an asset-based lens.

The collection opens with Catherine Gladwell’s post, which focuses on the experiences of young people who arrive later into the UK education system. She foregrounds the structural barriers they encounter and what they identify as necessary for genuine progression.

In their post, Lucy Hunt, Mohamed Abdel Keream and Michelle Proyer examine how schools can meaningfully respond to the pressures that refugee learners face. They argue that trauma‑informed practice matters only when embedded within whole‑school cultures that prioritise stability, relationships and linguistic respect rather than narrow framings. This emphasis on relational attentiveness is echoed in Lucy Hunt and Joanna McIntyre’s post on arts‑based refugee education. Drawing on 10 years of creative pedagogies across Europe, they show how arts‑based practices create opportunities for expression, connection and intercultural understanding, while also raising questions about sustainability, representation and policy alignment.

Mir Abdullah Miri’s post challenges the idea that belonging is measurable or straightforwardly reported. Drawing on lived experience, he reframes belonging as a condition shaped by institutional recognition and the distribution of power. This shift towards institutional responsibility resonates with Elizabeth Hilditch’s post which shows how educational settings can become stabilising environments when they cultivate trust and attend to the intersecting dimensions of young people’s lives.

In their post, Nick Haswell, Maria Petäjäniemi and Mervi Kaukko explore how educators navigate sensitive conversations about displacement. They highlight tensions that Finnish teachers face when addressing forced migration in mixed classrooms, and the balance that teachers must strike between creating space for dialogue and avoiding expectations that refugee learners should disclose personal experiences or educate others.

The collection concludes with Megan Greenwood’s post exploring asset‑based approaches to learners seeking sanctuary, in which she challenges reductive stereotypes by showing how whole‑school approaches that recognise strengths and value multilingualism benefit not only sanctuary‑seeking learners but school communities more broadly.

Overall, this special issue offers a vision of refugee education grounded in attentiveness, humility and relational responsibility. It reminds us that inclusion is not achieved through isolated interventions or well‑meaning gestures alone. It is sustained through the work of building cultures in which refugee learners are recognised as contributors rather than cases; as participants rather than problems; and as intellectual equals whose presence enriches shared learning spaces.

To take the needs of refugee students seriously is to take seriously the conditions that shape their opportunities. It is to address the systems that constrain them and to challenge the narratives that render them invisible. This collection invites educators, researchers and policymakers alike to imagine educational futures grounded in dignity, agency and shared belonging.

Note: throughout this collection, learners from displaced backgrounds are referred to variously as ‘refugee’ or ‘asylum-seeker’ (which have connotations associated with legal status in the UK context) and by the more encompassing term ‘sanctuary seeker’.

Joanna McIntyre, Professor

Professor in Education at University of Nottingham

Joanna McIntyre is Professor of Education at the University of Nottingham. Jo is interested in how we can understand and improve the lives of those who are educationally marginalised or disadvantaged by society. Jo’s book, Refugee Education, and her work in the field of refugee education explores the barriers and opportunities schools face when working to support refugee children. Jo’s recent research projects include an exploration of the role of arts in fostering a sense of belonging for newly arrived young people in cities in Europe, a project with Swedish educators looking at implementation of an inclusive model of education for refugee pupils and a series of research collaborations with Refugee Education UK (REUK). Jo established and leads the international Hub for Education for Refugees in Europe.

Wayne Veck, Professor

Professor of Education at University of Winchester

Wayne Veck began his career teaching English to Afghan and Iraqi refugees in the UK and is now Professor of Education at the University of Winchester, where he was Faculty Head of Research and Knowledge Exchange from 2015 to 2018. He is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Nottingham. He has given keynote addresses at the Universities of Bergamo, Vienna, Srinakharinwirot, Nottingham and Lillehammer University College, the Center for Latin American Studies of Inclusive Education, Chile, and the Polish Disability Forum’s conference in Warsaw. He has published in leading education journals, including the Oxford Review of Education, British Journal of Sociology of Education, Cambridge Journal of Education and the International Journal of Inclusive Education.