ABSTRACT
People seeking asylum face a number of barriers to access higher education in settlement countries like Australia, forcing higher education institutions to recognise them as full-fee-paying international students. While the impacts of this situation on students, institutions and refugee advocates have been reported, the gendered implications are underexplored. Drawing on Flores Garrido’s (2020) work on precarity from a feminist perspective, in this chapter, we understand precarity as denoting experiences characterised by uncertainty and instability, with the challenges of temporariness a key constituent of this. We use this understanding to develop a rich understanding of the key factors and processes that render access to higher education inaccessible to many women seeking asylum (WSA). In particular, using an in-depth collaborative-participatory methodology, we consider how three WSA experience higher education in their home country and how precarity can help us to understand the impact of gender on experiences of accessing and understanding barriers to accessing higher education. We argue that four forms of precarity underscore the women’s experience of accessing higher education in their home country and their hope for access to higher education in Australia. Implications for advocacy at a community and national level are discussed.
