1st Edition
African Heritage Australian Youth Forced Displacement, Educational Attainment, and Integration Outcomes
In the last four decades, Australia has resettled thousands of African refugees. As a visibly different minoritised group, Black African youth are often represented as disengaged, dangerous, and undesirable. Even so, rarely are generative mechanisms that negatively affect the life-courses of the youth critically examined.
Drawing on a wide range of theoretical resources, policy reviews, longitudinal statistical data, and in-depth interviews, this book reports on the educational attainment and integration outcomes of African heritage Australian youth from refugee backgrounds. The book also identifies intersectional factors of educational disadvantage, analyses equity provisions, and outlines policy ideas for improved educational attainment and integration of refugee youth. It is unique in its scope and focus and contributes to knowledge in African Australian studies.
The book will appeal to researchers, postgraduate students, and policymakers interested in understanding the dynamics of refugee resettlement and integration.
List of Figures List of Tables Abbreviations and Acronyms Acknowledgements Foreword Series Editor’s Preface Chapter 1: Introduction Part I Contexts and Concepts Chapter 2: African refugees in Australia: Resettlement and representation Chapter 3: Education and refugee integration: A capability approach Part II Educational Attainment Chapter 4: School education: Aspirations, engagement, and transition Chapter 5: Higher education opportunities: Policy visibility of refugees Chapter 6: Higher education participation: Access, experience, and success Part III Integration Outcomes Chapter 7: Multiculturalism and refugee integration Chapter 8: Economic participation, social engagement, and cultural citizenship Chapter 9 Racial othering Chapter 10 Improving refugee integration: Policy ideas Index
Biography
Tebeje Molla is a senior lecturer and ARC Future Fellow in the School of Education at Deakin University, Australia. His research focuses on inequality and policy responses in education. Theoretically, his work is informed by critical sociology and a capability approach to social justice and human development. Tebeje is the author of Higher Education in Ethiopia: Structural Inequalities and Policy Responses (Springer, 2018).
African Heritage Australian Youth is a powerful, compelling and timely book. It makes a profound contribution to significantly extending our understandings of the experience of African heritage youth from refugee backgrounds. In doing so it is an indispensable and vital source for policy makers, educators and politicians. While highlighting the challenges and injustices faced by African heritage youth, it is also an inspiring work which captures refugee resilience, agency and empowerment. In arguing for new forms of cultural citizenship, this work offers a pioneering and much needed innovative approach to achieving equity, freedom and dignity for African heritage refugees.
Professor Joy Damousi AM, Director, Research Centre for Refugees, Migration, and Humanitarian Studies, Australian Catholic University, Australia
African Heritage Australian Youth: Forced Displacement, Educational Attainment, and Integration Outcomes is a book of many voices. It presents a well-structured and thoughtful argument grounded in rich empirical data and multidisciplinary theoretical explication. I feel privileged Tebeje asked for my ‘opinion’, and in my opinion, this book not only spotlights the plight of African heritage youth but delivers a clear message of change and empowerment within the multicultural policy framework.
Dr Karen Dunwoodie, Deputy Director, Centre for Refugee Employment, Advocacy, Training and Education, Deakin University, Australia
African Heritage Australian Youth is an important intellectual work that draws attention to multi-faceted challenges that African heritage Australian youth have faced. The book also outlines policy ideas that can help address issues of disengagement and negative representation affecting the group. The book is an excellent read for people studying or working in education, migration, refugee settlement services, and multicultural and youth programs.
Dr William Abur, lecturer and researcher, University of Melbourne, Australia
Reading African Heritage Australian Youth with a non-academic and non-Australian perspective, I am very positively surprised by how relevant its analysis and policy recommendations are in a European context. Not only in relation to young refugees with an African background but also in relation to the education and integration of Europe’s marginalized Roma communities. Although differences are present, the similarities prevail. There are many valuable lessons to be learned from Tebeje Molla’s approach to inclusion. The book is of great interest to educators, policymakers, and anyone interested in understanding the barriers to education faced by refugee youth and the ways in which they can be overcome.
Johannes Cornelis van Nieuwkerk, initiator, Refival.org, Hungary
In African Heritage Australian Youth, Tebeje Molla offers readers a groundbreaking text that sheds light on an underserved and largely misunderstood student population. This important book incorporates multiple data sources and is conceptually framed using Sen’s capability approach. Molla’s work complicates what readers think they understand about people with refugee backgrounds and compels us to treat this group with the dignity they deserve. African Heritage Australian Youth is a vital read for any administrator, researcher, or policy professional committed to more clearly understanding and supporting marginalized students in the Australian context.
Dr Meseret F. Hailu, lecturer and researcher, Arizona State University, USA
