Introduction

Researchers and policymaker’s alike share the expectation that education is a tool to either resolve or address the difficulties refugees and their receiving countries face. Displacement occurs for a variety of contextual reasons, and the distinction between documented and undocumented refugee and asylum-seeker is often the result of politics. The education that may be most needed by refugee youth and that is often provided in conflict and immediate post-conflict communities, however, is more humanitarian in nature. Teachers are often ill-prepared, even through national education systems, to address unique academic and non-academic needs of refugee and asylum-seeking youth. The lived experiences of refugees in protracted displacement are often drastically different from the representations in host country curriculum, and they are socialized in schools through a curriculum that often represents a society in which they are unable to fully participate. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.