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CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS article

Front. Educ.
Sec. Language, Culture and Diversity
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2024.1415522
This article is part of the Research Topic Forced migration in education: challenges and opportunities View all 9 articles

Asylum spaces as spaces of nonrecognition for children: The ambiguities of welcoming and educating asylum-seeking children in Norway

Provisionally accepted
Wills Kalisha Wills Kalisha *
  • NLA University College, Bergen, Norway

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Asylum has historically been a refuge for the persecuted. However, it now faces a fundamental antagonism between asylum and law (Behrman, 2018), which often overlooks the rights of children seeking asylum. This paper explores the historical concept of asylum law from its inception in antiquity and the Roman era and its entanglements with the education of children. It also examines asylum's relevance to current conflicts over the educational rights of asylum-seeking children and how international conventions have neglected these rights. To contextualize the ambiguity of asylum and education, the paper presents a case study of Norway's reception of asylum-seeking children from the 1930s to the present day and how the Norwegian welfare system, which was founded on child rights protection, has struggled with the entry of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. The paper concludes with reflections on the potential impact of education for these children, considering their encounters as temporary educational moments. This exploration focuses on clarifying historical strands, turning points, and threads rather than taking a subjective historical perspective.

    Keywords: Asylum law and education, Unaccompanied minors, Education as a right, human rights in international law, UNHCR, Norwegian reception of asylum seeking children

    Received: 10 Apr 2024; Accepted: 16 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Kalisha. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Wills Kalisha, NLA University College, Bergen, Norway

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