New IRE issue: Transnational migration, refugee studies and lifelong learning

The latest issue of the International Review of Education – Journal of Lifelong Learning (IRE) considers challenges and opportunities for lifelong learning in the context of transnational migration and refugee studies.

Guest-edited by Shibao Guo from the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary in Canada, this special issue conceptualises the mobility of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers as circulatory and transnational rather than unidirectional, moving beyond the framework of methodological nationalism.

Aiming to extend the scope and meaning of transnational mobility, nine outstanding articles rethink the relationship between mobility, knowledge, diversity, inclusion and lifelong learning in the context of transnational migration.

Topics investigated include the role of lifelong learning in recent immigrants’ transition to work; internationally educated nurses’ perspectives on soft skills; diversity work in an immigrant services organization; the potential of transcultural lifelong learning; immigrant parents’ agency in language policy advocacy on behalf of their children; critical perspectives on practices of inclusion with adult immigrant students; a critical approach to refugee lifelong education which recognises the ways in which the colonial past is still active in the inequalities of the present; the multifaceted challenges asylum-seeking university students have to negotiate; and media and government framing of asylum seekers and migrant workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many of the contributions present insights from qualitative studies enabling analyses of migrant, refugee and asylum seeker perspectives and experiences, shared in interviews, focus group discussions, etc. Taken together, the articles in this special issue enrich our understanding of the changing dynamics and complexities of transnational migration, refugee studies and lifelong learning.