Migration, Refugees and Schooling

Migration and asylum seekers have been a major issue in the media and government recently, with thousands of refugees fleeing persecution every year and arriving in Australia by boat. I am torn on this issue as most Australians are. Although Tony Abbott’s plan to “Stop the boats” has premise in avoiding overpopulating Australia and taking unemployment rates to extreme heights, turning the boats around can be seen as an incredibly risky and superficial proposition. This is partly due to the risks of the journey itself with storms and dangerous weather that could destroy the boat, but predominantly as the boats may arrive back in either their own or another oppressed nation, with unaccompanied children onboard vulnerable to abuse rather than the freedom to settle into a peaceful society and school.

It is every human’s right to feel that they’re safe and free of danger and entitled to a proper education and lifestyle in a secure environment. Refugee status should not have an effect on an individual’s access to education, a notion that was fortunately passed with the abolishment of the White Australia Policy, despite the drying up of the number of asylum seekers permitted into Australia each year. It is essential that school curriculums represent refugees and asylum seekers as victims of oppression rather than dehumanizing them as being desperate for our help (Hattam & Every, 2010, p.409), yet at the same time Australian students need to understand the prejudice that has been exhibited against the refugees by the Australian government in the past.

I was moved by an article I read during the weekend from the 12 September 2013 edition of the Hornsby Advocate called “Compassionate student earns top award”, about a high school girl called Abi Rajkumar who volunteers some of her time every week to visit the Villawood Detention Centre and give the asylum seeker’s some support. Rajkumar is also planning to start a schooling program within the Detention centre, to teach the imprisoned asylum seekers to speak English. This article made me consider the dominance of harsh migration and refugee laws in Australia and the importance of human rights. The United States of America has similarly experienced issues with immigration, reforms from the late 1960s limiting the country’s ongoing capacity for “alien labor” (Zolberg, 1989, p.407) from countries other than Britain.

I wish that there could be a strong compromise to the plans of the coalition and Greens parties, without resorting to the financially draining scheme of the Labor Party to pay billions of dollars for Papua New Guinea to settle the asylum seekers in their country, a country afflicted by issues such as rape and domestic abuse. I wish that we could find a way to settle all the refugees in Australia without overpopulating the country. But at the end of the day, as Bill Shorten said on Q&A on Monday 22 July 2013: “there is a certain number of people this country can take each year overall” (Access: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3795782.htm). 

Migration should be taught at schools not to warn students of the danger of having too many immigrants and their possible taking over of our country, but rather to teach of the suffering the refugees have endured. In this way, students could understand the refugees as human beings like you or I who are merely seeking the safety and freedom we always take for granted. Abi Rajkumar’s example must be followed, the Australian government reaching out to refugees who have already settled in Australia to ensure an egalitarian school system.





Reference List:

-   Findlay, T; "Compassionate student earns top award"; Hornsby Advocate, published 12 September 2013

-   Hattam, R., & Every, D; (2010); “Teaching in fractured classrooms: refugee education, public culture, community and ethics”; Race Ethnicity and Education, 13(4), 409-424. doi: 10.1080/13613324.2010.488918 
-  "The PNG Solution & The Autism Spectrum"; Q&A, published 22 July 2013, accessible through -http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3795782.htm.

-  Zolberg, A. R (Autumn 1989); ‘The Next Waves: Migration Theory for a Changing World’; International Migration Review; Vol. 23, No. 3; Special Silver Anniversary Issue: International Migration an Assessment for the 90's; Publisher - The Center for Migration Studies of New York Inc; http://www.jstor.org/stable/2546422.

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