UK (University of Nottingham) Hub to support refugee education across Europe launched by Nottingham academics

A refugee education support hub has been launched by experts at the University of Nottingham.

The Hub for European Refugee Education (HERE) brings together academic and stakeholder expertise of policies and practices for integrating children, young people and adults with refugee backgrounds through education, in order to help them to be able to live lives of dignity and value in their new societies.

HERE forms a bridge between academics, policymakers, practitioners, refugee communities and other stakeholders in order to support societies across Europe to provide a socially just inclusion of refugee and people seeking asylum in, and through, education.

The Hub has been set up in response to the increasing number of child refugees in Europe – according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, at the end of 2021, of the 89.3 million forcibly displaced people, an estimated 36.5 million (41 per cent) were children below 18 years of age. In 2016, Save the Children noted that there were now more child refugees in Europe than at any point since the Second World War.

Dr Joanna McIntyre, Professor of Education at the University of Nottingham and Founder of HERE, said: “The situation across Europe concerning forced migration is often described as a crisis – but we need to challenge that depiction and move refugee education on from crisis response.”