On Whiteness in Migration and Refugee Education: An Unsettling Reckoning
Abstract
This reflective essay examines the persistence of whiteness and colonial logics within refugee, international, and migration education studies following a symposium attended by the authors, two racialized women scholars situated in the Global North. Drawing on personal observations and critical scholarship, the essay interrogates how refugee children from the Global South are often represented through deficit-oriented and damage-centered narratives that privilege Western authority while marginalizing the voices and agency of displaced communities. One key moment examined involves a white educator presenting refugee children’s poems in English, raising questions about consent, language, assimilation, and the ethics of representation. Engaging with the work of decolonial and Global South scholars, the essay critiques how suffering becomes consumable within academic spaces and highlights the role of the white gaze and white saviourism in shaping knowledge production. The essay calls for more accountable, relational, and decolonial approaches to refugee and migration education research.
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