Frontiers of belonging: the education of unaccompanied refugee youth

Author
Annika Lems

Publisher
Bloomington: Indiana University Press  

Year of publication
2022

ISBN
978-1-80073-266-7

OPAC

Abstract
As unprecedented numbers of unaccompanied African minors requested asylum in Europe in 2015, Annika Lems witnessed a peculiar dynamic: despite inclusionary language in official policy and broader society, these children faced a deluge of exclusionary practices in the classroom and beyond.

Frontiers of Belonging traces the educational paths of refugee youth arriving in Switzerland amid the shifting sociopolitical terrain of the refugee crisis and the underlying hierarchies of deservingness. Lems reveals how these minors sought protection and support, especially in educational settings, but were instead treated as threats to the economic and cultural integrity of Switzerland. Each chapter highlights a specific child’s story—Jamila, Meron, Samuel, and more—as they found themselves left out, while on paper being allowed “in”. The result is a highly ambiguous social reality for young refugees, resulting in stressful, existential balancing acts.

A captivating ethnography, Frontiers of Belonging allows readers into the Swiss classrooms where unspoken distinctions between self and other, guest and host, refugee and resident, were formed, policed, and challenged.

In this Read On, Annika Lems talks about her recently published book: Frontiers of Belonging. The Education of Unaccompanied Refugee Youth. She addresses the specifics of Swiss integration policy. This provides for special integration classes for unaccompanied refugee minors in order to give them access to the Swiss education and labour market and thus to society. But how well does this system, which is comparable to the refugee policies of many other European countries, work?

Frontiers of Belonging: The Education of Unaccompanied Refugee Youth

In this Read On, Annika Lems talks about her recently published book: Frontiers of Belonging. The Education of Unaccompanied Refugee Youth. She addresses the specifics of Swiss integration policy. This provides for special integration classes for unaccompanied refugee minors in order to give them access to the Swiss education and labour market and thus to society. But how well does this system, which is comparable to the refugee policies of many other European countries, work?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX1wXNbjnxY
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