Exacerbating exclusion? How the logic of refugee education perpetuates the exclusion of refugees with disabilities in Lebanon.

Abstract

This article assesses how the logic of refugee education affects the inclusion of refugees with disabilities. It draws on academic literature, sociological and ethnographic research in Lebanon with refugees with disabilities and refugee education practitioners, and conversations between the authors on practices they witnessed out in the field. They highlight four tensions between how refugee education is conceptualised on the one hand, and the prerequisite logics for disability-inclusive education on the other. First, they historicise the emergence of refugee education, highlighting how the logic of securitisation facilitates the exclusion of refugees with disabilities who fall outside constructs of the "threatening migrant". Second, they highlight the neoliberal logics shaping funding structures and educational assumptions within refugee education. Ideals of cost-benefit analyses and future employability interact with ableist assumptions to construe refugees with disabilities as less valuable to include. Third, the reliance on vulnerability frameworks leads to disempowering perceptions of disability that conflict with more equitable narratives of diversity and inclusion. Fourth, conflicting temporal pressures are at play between ideas of "emergency" education, which have a temporary and present-oriented focus, and disability-inclusive education, which is developmental and future-oriented. The tensions between the dominant lexicon of refugee education and the philosophy underlying inclusive education contribute to marginalisation, disempowerment and exclusion. This article calls for the refugee education community of scholars and practitioners to engage in critical reflection on how the frameworks within which we work might better support the recognition, inclusion and dignified treatment of refugees with disabilities.