Child Refugees Academic Rights Attainment:

Revisiting United Kingdoms Education Policy

on International Refugees

by:
Judilyn S. Melencio
Bachelor of Arts in International Studies
Far Eastern University
Nicanor Reyest St, Sampaloc, Manila

INTRODUCTION
In the last decades, human mobility has significantly grown and states have become
more diverse - a diversity that reflects not merely cultural and social differences, but also
disparity in statuses and access to rights (Castles andDavidson, 2000). Globalisation,
human mobility and forced migration have altered the traditional nation-state and disrupted
modern human rights regimes of rights (Soysal, 1994). As a result, social rights are
expanding and are becoming more associated with human rights, which are accessed
through a supra-national entity. However, not everybody is enjoying these new
opportunities, offered by social rights. Especially within the European Union, access to the
supra-national sphere and to the logic of personhood is based on the precondition of
national membership.
In the context of these tensions between the different logic of rights and
membership, refugee protection has an even more controversial role. The creation of an
international system of refugees rights, following an increase in their movements, stands
in a dichotomous relation with nation states conception of rights. The tensions between
these two superficially antagonistic principles has increased progressively since the end of
World War II, when refugees rights and human rights emerged to protect human interests
against the abuses of states political power (Benhabib, 2004). Currently, the rigid
requirements of immigration policies, symbols of the resilience of national sovereignty,
and the complex reciprocal relationship between states and citizens have led to
increasingly severe controls of the entry and residence of non-citizens, and refugees have
become the threat for nation-states. The presence of refugees in contemporary societies
raises significant challenges as far as education is concerned, especially since modern
education systems were projects of state formation, and the expansion of education follows
the expansion of social rights.

METHODOLOGY
The pilot study aims to investigate the right to education for refugee children within
national policy discourses and practices, adopting a comparative European perspective. The
study will critically explore the enactment of refugee childrens right to education
established by the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) within British and
Italian education policies. It will focus also on policy makers conceptualisation of refugee
childrens access to mainstream education within two different levels of the policy-making
process: international and national. The pilot study will relate international human rights
policy and national political processes to aspects of the wide literature addressing the
question of human rights and refugees: policy-making and policy enactment, sociology of
human rights, and the tensions between trans-national and welfare rights.
The research will draw on the ontological perspective of policy enactment, rather than
the more technical policy implementation, adopting Balls (1990) conceptualisation. Policy
is defined by Ball (1990) as a cyclical, freewheeling and dialectical process, which might
be better understood as responding to a complex and heterogeneous configuration of
elements. Education policy-making takes place in a complex reality of influence, pressure,
compromises and opposition that characterise every policy process.
The study also connects also with the sociology of human rights, as it considers
strengths and weaknesses of both national and transnational systems of entitlement and
protection, as well as the social processes by which groups accrue rights, and the way in
which already established rights could be eroded (Benhabib, 2004; Douzinas, 2000, 2007;
Morris, 2006; Soysal, 1994). The universalisation of the right to education, promoted in
particular by the CRC, seems to undermine a model of education that is instrumental to the
process of nation-state formation (Hodgson, 1998). International conventions still have a
limited power over social rights, including the right to education, and they are constrained
by the recognition of national sovereignty.
In line with the purpose of the study presented above, a number of research questions
will help to guide the research process:

How do policy makers in the international human rights arena formulate discourses
around the right to education for refugee children?

How are these discourses translated within national education policies?

What is the role of voluntary sector organisations, concerned with refugee issues, in
guaranteeing the right to education for refugee children?

What are the similarities and the differences between Italy and UK in national

education policies related to refugee children?

What is the main importance of the study to the researcher?

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Refugee protection has a controversial role within the historical development of
modern human rights, within national education policy making, and welfare system. The
tensions between human rights regime and nation states sovereignty have deteriorated
progressively since the end of World War II, when human rights emerged as a weapon to
protect human interests against the abuses of states political power. These complex
processes and the unprecedented changes brought on by them have created conditions for
the emergence of normative incongruities, and disparities in the enjoyment of fundamental
rights (Benhabib, 2004).
The present chapter introduces the conceptual themes that have guided through the
formulation and analysis of the data collected for this pilot study. It commences by
reviewing Balls (1990; 1997) approach to policy and education policy-making. In doing
so, it focuses on the reality of influence, pressure, conflict and compromises between
national and global interests, in which the policy-making process is taking place. This leads
to the discussion about the development of modern human rights, and about the tensions
between universal rights and national sovereignty, particularly generated in the context of
the enactment of refugee childrens right to education. The final section examines the
challenge that immigration and asylum represent for the delivery of welfare rights, thus
having a considerable impact on access to good quality mainstream education for refugee
children.
Education policy-making
Policy relies on the authoritative allocation of values. Indeed it is the operational
statement of values, a statement of prescriptive intent, argues Kogan (1975). This
authoritative allocation of values draws attention to the centrality of power and control in
the very concept of policy. Logically, policy and policy-making cannot be detached from
interests, conflicts, domination or justice. Discontinuities, compromises, omissions and
exceptions seem to be also important (Ball, 1990).
As a consequence, education policy-making is not simply a direct response to

dominant interests, and might be understood not as reflecting the interests of one specific
social class, but as responding to a complex and heterogeneous configuration of elements,
including ideologies, that are residual or emergent, as well as dominant (Svi Shapiro,
1980).
Ball (1990; 1997) argues that the field of education policy-making and policy
analysis is dominated by commentary rather than by research, and these abstract accounts
fail to grasp the complex realities of influence, pressure, compromise, and opposition that
characterise the policy process. In a study on education policy-making and analysis, the
author attempts to explain the policy process through individuals and groups discourses in
the arenas of influence in which they move (Ball, 1990). He explores three dimensions of
the education policy-making, represented by the political, the ideological and the
economic. Such a framework leads to a dynamic consideration in relation to these three
dimensions, and vice versa. The investigation of the political focus on the forms of
governance in education, while the exploration of the ideological leads to the consideration
of the ways in which education policy is conceived and discussed. The investigation of the
economic highlights the consideration of both the funding of education and the
contribution that education makes to productivity (Ball, 1990).
Review of Related Literature
Human rights stem from the philosophy that underpins natural rights, and have
been used to justify the existence of rights inherently belonging to people, independent of
any social and political structures (Bobbio, 1996; Cassese, 1990).
The literature presents different perspectives about the origin of modern human
rights. While some argue that they originate from the establishment of the United
Nations (Cumper, 1999), others claim that they have a much longer history (Benhabib,
2004; Douzinas, 2000; 2007). According to Douzinas (2007), human rights first appeared
with the French Declaration Des Droits de lHomme et du Citoyen, which has mutated
Lockes (1960) conceptualisation of natural rights. The rights established by this
declaration have brought into power a new type of association - the nation state, and a new
type of man- the national citizen, who becomes the first beneficiary of these rights. A gap
immediately appears between the universal attribute of humanity, and its local instantiation,
in that it is the privilege of citizenship and its expression in sovereignty that makes the
rights real (Douzinas, 2007). Thus, the universal rights established by the French
declaration are condemned to nostalgia, and their claims seem to remain radically
incomplete.

Since the end of World War II, human rights have become increasingly
contextualised and bound up with the question about their enactment. The progressive
interpenetration of national and global culture has transformed the conceptualisation of
human rights into a powerful discourse able to challenge the modern notion of national
sovereignty. As a consequence, the international human rights regime has been established
with rules and institutions to which states are supposed to be committed (Douzinas, 2000).
Despite being an international body in charge of human rights protection, when codifying
the International Bill of Rights, the UN had to balance the interests of nation states and
their resulting patterns of dominance (Hegarty, 1999). Thus, states signatories of human
rights treaties have preferred to talk the talk, rather than walk the walk of human rights
(Risse, 1999, p. 27).
As many authors have argued, the system of enactment of international human
rights law is not self-sufficient, but relies on the will of national governments (Benhabib,
2004; Douzinas, 2007; Cassese, 1986; Risse, 1999). Each state retains the freedom to
translate international duties into domestic standards. The only mechanism that the UN has
instituted for the enactment of human rights protection consists of monitoring and
reporting (ORawe, 1999). These mechanisms, which are partly illustrated in the analysis
chapter of this dissertation, arise from the treaties themselves, or from resolutions dealing
with consistent patterns of violation. Despite the number of reports by the special
rapporteurs in the area of economic, social and cultural rights, there is still considerable
lack of concrete enactment of human rights principles.
Refugee childrens right to education and the 4As scheme
The normative incongruities between international human rights and national
sovereignty are reflected in the realm of refugee education. This inconsistency triggers the
debate about whether the right to education is to be considered as universal or if it is
conditional on loyalty to the nation state. Exploring this debate implies an analysis of the
historical evolution of education, from being a tool to forge the nation state, to universal
human right, which has been presented elsewhere (Migliarini, 2009). For the purpose of
this study, a specific focus will be given to the right to education for refugee children, as
well as to the 4As scheme, used to monitor the enactment of refugee childrens rights
expressed by the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

The CRC set comprehensive standards for refugee children, shifting the right to

education from a humanitarian intervention to a human right. Article 2 of this

Convention states that every child within a states jurisdiction holds all CRC rights without
regard to citizenship, immigration status, or any other status. Refugee children are entitled
to all the rights of the CRC. Article 28 places a duty on state parties to recognize the right
of all children to compulsory education, and every other stage of education (i.e. secondary,
higher education) should be achieved on the basis of equality of opportunity. State parties
have to respect the equality principle and other aspects of education (Van Bueren, 1998); to
take protective measures in order to prevent or combat discrimination in education and to
undertake an active policy in order to guarantee substantive equality (Verheyde, 2006).
In order to monitor national governments human rights obligation in education,
Tomasevski, the former UN special rapporteur on the right to education, has developed the
4As scheme that requires education to be Available, Accessible, Acceptable, and Adaptable
(Tomasevski, 2006). The scheme represents a set of key indicators to monitor
governments performances, as well as monitoring scheme for data gathering, analysis and
feedback into governmental and human rights councils policy deliberation.
Availability refers to functioning educational institutions and programmes.
Accessibility requires that educational institutions and programmes have to be accessible
to everyone, without discrimination. Accessibility has three overlapping dimensions: nondiscrimination -education must be accessible to all, especially the most vulnerable groups-,
physical accessibility - education has to be within a safe physical reach-, and economical
accessibility education has to be affordable to all, and there should not be indirect costs
for the family. Making education available embodies the obligation to take financial and
technical actions to ensure that an education system of good quality is established and
maintained. Also, Article 28 of the CRC requires educational institutions and programmes
to be accessible to all without any discrimination on any of the prohibited grounds
established by the 1960 UNESCO Convention against Discrimination in Education.
Acceptability implies that the form and substance of education, including curricula and
teaching methods, have to be relevant and culturally appropriate to students and, in some
cases to parents. Adaptability requires education to be flexible to the needs of changing
societies and of students (Tomasevski, 2006).
This simple 4As scheme translates international legal obligations related to education
and integrates all human rights dimensions. According to Tomasevski (2001), this scheme
delineates the minimal standards that should be sought worldwide, and the full realisation
as optimal standards. A unique task of the government is to regulate education by setting
and reinforcing these standards, carrying out continuous monitoring, and undertake

corrective action whenever it is necessary.

Despite the obligations imposed by the CRC and the 4As scheme, the right to education
of refugee children is often considered as falling outside the minimum core content of the
right to education, which represent the essence of rights that should not be violated by
states (Coomans, 1995). Further, refugee education is persistently considered as a shortterm emergency provision. State parties to the CRC justify the denial of long-term
compulsory education for refugee children by governments financial constraints (Dodds,
1986; Hathaway, 2005). In effect, long-term education is often denied to discourage
refugee flows, or to encourage their premature repatriation. Governments short-term and
ad hoc responses for the education of refugee children give a further example of the
tension between states willingness to guarantee compulsory education exclusively for
national citizens, and their human rights obligations (Dodds, 1986).

Although education has tended to occupy an independent position within the welfare
state system, the conflict between human rights and national sovereignty invests also the
delivery of social rights. The following section attempts to explore the social versus transnational conflict, as having a significant impact on the recognition of right to education for
refugee children.
Refugees and welfare rights
Immigration and asylum represent an issue for which human rights conventions and
declarations are salient, as these rights transcend the boundaries of the nation state. Both
immigration and the system of national welfare engage with a rather complex set of
interests and influences. Control of borders is the essence of sovereignty, and states tend to
tight up the influx of migrants and refugees to prevent the competition between citizens
and alien workers, while also protecting natural resources (Morris, 2006). Immigration
creates a conflict between rights and markets, and a key question is how states can manage
the economic and humanitarian imperatives that underpin immigration and refugees rights
(Morris, 2006). However, the liberal position that characterises most European countries
provides market-based incentives, reinforced by right-based politics, despite the evident
tension in these two aspects of liberalism.
Advanced capitalist welfare states employ an elaborate hierarchy of formal statuses
for the designation of rights, with different rights attaching to different statuses (Morris,
2006). Also, an idealised notion of full citizenship can be used as the yardstick against to

which assess the impact of trans-national rights for non-citizen. Non-citizens are
constantly denied full political rights, and their civil and social rights can be severely
restricted, as in the case of asylum seekers detention.
Despite the optimism about post-national expansion of rights expressed by some
authors within the field of sociology of human rights (see Soysal, 1994), international
conventions have limited power over social rights and security of residence (Morris, 2006).
In fact, they are constrained by the recognition of state control over entry and stay. With
respect to social rights, those granted by universal personhood are strictly limited.
Although immigrants and refugees who have achieved full residence status will be
accorded the same social rights as citizens, distinctions by immigration status retains
considerable force in relation to welfare rights. The connection between public funds and
residence preludes to the possibility that the delivery of social rights can be used as a tool
for monitoring legal status. This appears to be very significant for the residence conditions
of asylum seekers and refugees, as well as for their access to education. Particularly, it
highlights the interconnection between rights and control, and the stratification of the
system of social support. The stratification of social support also explains the continuing
presence of asylum seekers and refugees within the underground population, having
difficulties in asserting the social rights that they have (Morris, 2004; Soysal, 1994).

ANALYSIS AND DATA GATHERING

The following two chapters present the analysis of the data gathered for the pilot
study. In framing the aim of the analysis in terms of how policy makers at different levels
of the policy making process (i.e. international and national) deal with the enactment of the
right to education for refugee children, a symbolic interactionist approach, within an
intepretivist paradigm, is adopted. Interpretivism is based on the belief that social actors
construct a world of lived reality by attaching specific meanings to local situations.
Interpretivists believe that knowledge is always local, situated in a local culture and
embedded in organisational sites (Denzin and Lincoln, 1998; ODonoghue, 2007). Thus,
the aim of the analysis of the data gathered is to understand the complex world of human
rights enactment, from the point of view of the policy makers who live it.
Underpinning interpretivism are Blumer (1969) three central propositions of symbolic
interactionism. According to the author, human beings act towards things on the basis of
the meanings that those things have for them. The meaning of such things is derived from
or arises out of social interaction that one has with others, and meanings are handed in and
modified through an interpretive process used by the person in dealing with the things

encountered (Blumer, 1969). Adopting these principles as the broad meta-theoretical

foundations for the present analysis means that it is important to explore:

International and national policy makers perspectives on the right to education for
refugee children;

How they act towards it, how they act towards others in relation to it;
How their perspectives and actions change over time.
This chapter focuses on the CDA of international and national education policies
mentioned in the methodology chapter.

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework

My core analytical method for the policy documents presented above includes
Faircloughs (2010) formulation of critical discourse analysis. The author argues that the
methodology can be organised in four stages, which can be further elaborated into a
number of steps:

Stage 1: focus upon a social wrong, in its semiotic aspect;

Stage 2: identify obstacles to addressing the social wrong;

Stage 3: consider whether the social order needs the social wrong;

Stage 4: identify possible ways past the obstacles.

This framework focuses on the research on social wrongs, a term that Fairclough prefers
to problems. Wrongs include injustices and inequalities which people experience, but
which are not necessary wrongs in the sense that, given certain social conditions they
could be righted or at least mitigated. These might be inequalities in access to material
resources, lack of political rights, inequalities on the basis of differences in ethnic or
cultural identity (Fairclough, 2010).
Stage 1 of CDA methodology indicates a focus on wrongs, and the first step in Stage 1 is
constructing a research object for researching the wrong in a transdisciplinary way
(Fairclough, 2010). Within Stage 2, it is important to consider semiotic aspects of the
obstacles, and to analyse the dialectical relations between semiotic and extra-semiotic
elements in relevant practices, institutions and events, which entails collecting and
analysing relevant texts. Stage 3 asks whether the social wrong is inherent to the social
order so that it cannot be righted without changing the social order, or something that can
be righted without a radical change. Stage 4 asks how the obstacles identified in Stage 2
might be overcome, and since these obstacles are partly semiotic in character, it focuses on
how people actually deal or might deal with the obstacles in part by contesting and

changing discourse (Farclough, 2010).

In adopting this process, as the author suggests, I did not interpret the stages or steps
in a mechanical way. In fact, although they constitute an essential part of the methodology,
and while it does make partial sense to proceed from one to the next, the relationship
between them in doing research is not simply that of sequential order (Fairclough, 2010).
4.2.1 CDA Stage 1
The first analytical stage involved focusing on the research topic and pointing out
the social wrong, which can be a dialectical relation between semiotic and what Fariclough
defines other moments. In this research project, the social wrong is represented by the
exclusion of refugee children from mainstream compulsory education within the UK and
Italy. This could be consider as a social wrong in that it undermines the universal principles
established by the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, which both the UK and
Italy have signed and ratified. One controversial formulation of this social wrong in this
case might be that despite international law establish a universal right to education, state
parties still prefer to guarantee quality compulsory education for national citizens.
4.2.2 CDA Stage 2
Stage 2 requires bringing the analysis of the social order, and one point of entry,
into this analysis that can be semiotic (Fairclough, 2010). This stage includes three
different steps that the author formulated as follows:

Analysing dialectical relations between semiosis and other social elements:

between orders of discourse and other elements of social practices.

Selecting texts, and focusing on categories for their analysis, in the light of and
appropriate to the constitution of the object of research.

Carry out analysis of texts.

In Step 1, I analyzed the contrasting tendencies of international human right

protection versus more populist discourses around immigration. Thus, the analysis helped
me contextualize the British and Italian strategies and policies, which are in focus. In the
UK and Italy, the education of refugee children has been substantially influenced by the
countries immigration and asylum policies. Particularly in the UK, the extensive state
activity in the past two decades in the area of asylum and immigration has, in effect, coopted other arms of the state (including the education system) into immigration

enforcement (Cohen, 2003).

The very perception of asylum-seekers and refugees in the UK and Italy has greatly
changed over the past two decades. In the UK, refugees came to signify not just the
Other, but also an unwanted, more dangerous alien. In the Italian contest they have been
increasingly identified within the category of illegal immigrants (Pinson, Arnot,
Candappa, 2010). Recognition of this danger can be found in the UK, in the title of the
White Paper Secure Borders, Safe Heavens, as it suggests that there is the need to secure
first the British identities, before the government could let asylum-seekers and refugees
in, or in the Pacchetto Sicurezza (Security Package), in the Italian context. Thus, they have
become a legitimate scapegoat for normally taboo racial sentiments. Further, the image of
refugees as non-assimilable, as a threat to social cohesion, gave legitimacy to policies of
control and exclusion (Pinson, Arnot, Candappa, 2010).
As a consequence, the main concern of the Home Office in the UK and of the
Ministry of the Interior in Italy in the past decades has been to reduce the numbers of
asylum-seekers, to decrease the number of applicants granted refuge and to increase the
numbers of swift and successful removals of failed asylum seekers.
This had a significant impact on the access to social and educational rights for refugee
children, who find themselves increasingly marginalized by the host society.

These processes of tightening up the influx of refugees and of reducing their rights
have an important semiotic dimension: the networks of social practices, which they entail,
are also orders of discourse which themselves cut across structural and scalar boundaries
(Fairclough, 2010). For instance, the populist discourse on immigration is often dominant
in national education, politics, and more generally in the context of the European Union.
Moreover, the semiotic dimension is fundamental to human right protection versus
immigration restrictions, as both these processes are semantically driven. They begin as
discourses, which constitute imaginaries, particularly emphasized by the media, for new
relations of structure and scale in education, government and economies. These may be
hegemonic, or dominant, and may be widely re-contextualized and operationalized in
new structures, practices, relations and institutions (Fairclough, 2010). The semiotic
dimension, deeply embedded within and constitutive of the new structural and scalar
relations, is itself part of the obstacles to addressing the social wrong.

CONCLUSION

The chapter has presented the critical discourse analysis of international human
rights documents and national education policies, which constitute the first analytical stage
of this pilot study. The overall aim of the chapter was to explore the discourses around the
right to education for refugee children within a variety of international legally binding
documents and educational strategies undertaken by the UK and Italian governments.
The focal point of the study to the researcher is clearly having a broad analysis as to
why refugees in UK and Italy experience some hindrance towards their right in sustaining
good education. It helped me to understand further as an International Studies major the
rights of each and every individual regardless of the standing in the society. Whether they
are or not a citizen of that country, so long as they are entitled to such, by all means it
should be given to them. As my renowned professor in International Relations, Professor
Royce Randall Lim, we the students of International Studies should develop a strong
foundation in fostering our minds through analysis and continuous learning. That what
made more inspired to come up with a competitive research like this.
The point of entry of CDA is the exclusion of refugee children from mainstream
compulsory education, which is identified as the social wrong, in the context of two
European countries that have signed and ratified the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the
Child. This social wrong parallels the increasing restrictions on immigration and asylum,
set by immigration legislation in the two countries, and the perception of refugees as
aliens. These processes of restriction have a powerful semiotic dimension that is
reproduced in the media discourse, and in education.
As the analysis has shown, human rights documents set specific rights for refugee
children and guidelines for the enactment of those rights, which are not fully followed by
the national governments. Despite some governments strategies to guarantee quality
education to refugee children, as Aiming High: guidance on the education of asylum
seeking and refugee children shows, there is still a gap between promise and performance
in the enforcement of the right to education. Of particular relevance is the document
published by the Italian Ministry of Education (MIUR), where no specific reference is
made to refugee children, or to specific educational provisions for them. It seems that
they have been considered within the category of non-Italian children, which includes all
children that have not the Italian citizenship, and therefore also Children coming from
other EU countries.

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