Barriers to Higher Education in Displacement: Experiences of Syrian Refugee Students in Turkish Universities

Introduction

Many refugees youth aspire to complete higher education in order to pursue personal development, obtain secure employment, facilitate socio-economic integration, and build more stable futures in their new communities (McWilliams & Bonet, 2016; Ramsay & Baker, 2019; Shakya et al., 2010). However, they often face intersecting legal, economic, linguistic, psychosocial, and structural barriers to higher education (Baker et al., 2018; Morrice et al., 2019; Yavcan & El-Ghali, 2017). While access to compulsory schooling is certainly important, higher education enrollment reveals by far the largest disparity between host and refugee populations and presents unique challenges for refugee students as well as policymakers and educators (Ramsay & Baker, 2019; Unangst et al., 2020; UNHCR, 2016).

Research in this area is growing, but much recent empirical literature on education for refugees is situated in resettlement contexts, primarily the USA, Germany, Australia, and Canada (e.g., Bajaj & Suresh, 2018; Bajwa et al., 2018; Burke et al., 2023). There is a particular dearth of research focusing on access to national higher education systems in countries of first asylum such as Turkey, Uganda, and Pakistan, where the vast majority of refugees reside (de Wit et al., 2020; UNHCR, 2023a). These settings are overwhelmingly low- and middle-income nations in the Global South with more constrained options for aspiring students than resettlement settings, which are typically higher-income countries in the Global North (Unangst et al., 2020; UNHCR, 2023b). Furthermore, the extant research largely focuses on policy frameworks and programmatic approaches for refugee students rather than examining what these students themselves are doing to overcome barriers (e.g., Burke et al., 2023; Streitweiser & Brück, 2018).

This chapter addresses these gaps by examining the experiences of a group of 11 Syrian refugee young adults who accessed the national higher education system during displacement in Turkey, the country hosting the largest number of refugees in the world (UNHCR, 2023a). Based on ethnographic research conducted in 2020, this chapter documents how these participants encountered and overcame the challenges of interrupted education, informational and navigational barriers, language acquisition, economic constraints, and racism to pursue their goals.