https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4468-6537
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Caroline Spaas, Perspectives on Transitions in Refugee Education: Ruptures, Passages, and Re-Orientations, Journal of Refugee Studies, Volume 37, Issue 2, June 2024, Pages 605–608, https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/feae004
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Extract
Introduction
This book review co-indices with the staggering flare-up of violence between Palestine and Israel, at the juncture of relatively recent wars, such as the war in Ukraine, and too many other enduring, complex, and escalating conflicts around the world. In all these places, we bear witness to the horrific experiences that force mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters to make the life-altering decision of leaving their homes in search of safety. Singh et al.’s (2023) book departs from precisely that immense ‘rupture’ (p. 7), the uprooting from ‘a familiar place, life, and self’ (p. 7), and the many transitions that follow for those forced to flee their homes and rebuild life in resettlement. Engaging with the concept of transitions as centrally defining the refugee experience and stating that ‘being a refugee means being in a constant move between not just geographical but also cultural, institutional, and/or psychological places and spaces’ (p. 9), the book proposes an exploration of these transitions and their intersections with refugees’ educational experiences. It describes the complex relationship and interactions between refugees’ transitional experiences on the individual, social, and cultural level and invites scrutiny of the ways in which resettlement societies engage with and respond to these experiences in refugee education.
