Book Review: Right Where We Belong, How Refugee Teachers and Students are Changing the Future of Education
Schools are more than the physical space for learning the three Rs. They are also places of refuge and stability, where a welcoming environment can help children feel more connected to their peers, teachers and community. But for refugee children and families, already affected by conflict and loss, belonging can feel remote as they are caught between national policies geared towards sending them “home,” and their own desires to pursue a life of purpose where they are.
Right Where We Belong gives readers all the feels. It is brimming with empathy and compassion for refugee families and children but also packed with interesting facts about the dramatic growth in cross-border displacement, refugees lack of access to education, and the history of education in refugee host countries. I feel better about the world knowing that this book exists, and that it may help to change widespread misconceptions that refugees are a burden, the “other,” or alternately, a homogenous group to be “saved” from their own poverty and desperation.
The author, Sarah Dryden-Peterson of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, uses language that envelopes the reader in hope while highlighting our similarities and the need we each have to feel part of a larger, welcoming community. Words like “weave together,” “thread,” “connect,” “engage,” and “inclusion,” permeate the narrative and serve to bring the reader closer to the children and families impacted by conflict and searching for ways to begin again. At the same time, personal stories about people like Jacques, Abdi, and Manar, whom Dryden-Peterson met during her research, are sprinkled throughout the book show how refugees are like everyone else with the same hopes, and fears of rejection. Yet these stories also show that refugees have the added concern of feeling like outsiders, with no option to return to their place of birth, and not able to make a permanent home in new countries where their families have lived for many years, even decades.
Dryden-Peterson beautifully takes the reader through different aspects of refugees’ struggles for a quality education, moving beyond academic skill acquisition (though this is important) to the softer realm of feelings, and how education can create the sense of place and belonging, as well as a pathway toward a life with more certainty. Belonging is central to how human beings experience fulfillment, but Dryden-Peterson’s research reveals that for refugees, this need can appear unachievable.
Right Where We Belong is organized along the themes of Teacher, Sanctuary, Power, Purpose, Learning, and Belonging, reflecting factors that directly affect the educational experience of refugees. Each chapter includes contextual information such as the fact that since 1990, between forty and sixty-eight countries have experienced conflict, and together, these countries account for 46 to 79 percent of the global population. Dryden-Peterson explains how national policies can determine what constitutes a “well-founded fear of being persecuted,” as described in the 1951 Refugee Convention, to determine whether (or not) a certain population qualifies for refugee status. She highlights the fact that just one percent of refugees are resettled into countries able to provide them with a path to citizenship. Further, Dryden-Peterson writes that education was not always part of the international response to displacement. In fact, as recently as 2011, UNHCR had no locally-based education specialists to ensure that refugee children could access learning resources. We learn how these policies, and others, affect real people and the search for a place to call home.
Education for refugees is not always based on what’s best for the child, but on a power struggle in host countries. Dryden-Peterson goes on to identify four distinct periods in the history of education in refugee hosting countries, based on different conceptions of power: liberation, standardization, localization and nationalization. In each, refugees’ access to an education that could help them define their own future was dictated by the power politics of the time. The purpose of refugee education segued from schooling meant to give children the tools to succeed where they are (in the host country), to preparing them to return to their country of origin which they may never have known, with languages they don’t speak, and which may not be safe — the very reason they or their families fled in the first place. This was the case for Henri, a refugee from Burundi who’d grown up in refugee camps in Tanzania. Education had become a tool of containment as the government had decided that Henri and others like him, posed a threat to native-born Tanzanians.
In addition to the state-driven power dynamics, individuals themselves can feel powerless and invisible. Dryden-Peterson gives us the example of Javier, who when resettled in Canada had trouble finding his own place in society. Yet after being greeted by a local he had met through a Host welcome dinner, this small interaction helped him to feel a sense of belonging in his new country.
Learning is a key end goal of education and central to the success of the Sustainable Development Goals which have established learning targets in literacy and math for children across education levels. But Dryden-Peterson goes beyond these fundamentals to consider the importance of blending historical understanding into curricula so that children can “link their past, present and future”. Without the skills to understand their own stories, refugee children will have a harder time finding belonging in school.
I have worked for many years with a Montreal-based foundation supporting education initiatives for children in developing countries yet I don’t believe I have ever read research so imbued with idealism, hope and indeed, love. Education is a human right, but so is that more amorphous, harder to pin-down, sense of belonging or feeling at home. As human beings, we all want to feel loved, valued, and part of a larger community because, after all, we are wired to want the support of those around us for our very survival. Dryden-Peterson doesn’t discuss happiness, but ultimately, being a part of a larger whole and feeling loved can lead to happiness which makes life all the more fulfilling.
The book begs the question: How can those of us who have privileges, whether social or financial, ensure that everyone in our own community feels welcome. It’s easy to belong in a place where the laws are designed to promote your own interests, when you speak the language used in government and in schools, when you can identify with the history being taught, and recognize yourself in local literature. Dryden-Peterson has some powerful ideas on how teachers and policymakers can help students feel at home. But we all have a role to play in breaking down institutional, historical, and even physical walls that create boundaries between “us” and “them,” and replace these structures with a shared vision of the future.
