Abstract
For decades, many countries have kept refugees in settlements separated from local populations, making ‘integration’ a chimera. More recently, however, governments and international organizations have advocated for greater refugee integration and framed education as key to this process. For adult refugees, education in the place of asylum often focuses most heavily on language learning. This chapter explores the Refugee Law Project’s (RLP) English for Adults (EFA) program – the largest language education program for adult refugees residing in Uganda. This chapter describes how educators in the program enact a translanguaging pedagogy and explores what educators and students think about these non-traditional teaching practices. The chapter shows how educators take on the role of detective, co-learner, builder and transformer (Garcia O, The linguistic integration of adult migrants. Degruyter, 2017) to help students develop language skills and a sense of empowerment and belonging during their stay in Uganda. This chapter represents an initial effort – the first case study of one of the few adult refugee language courses in one of the world’s largest refugee hosting countries. Future studies should build on these findings with more learner perspectives and quantitative data to trace how the EFA program impacts its learners.
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- 1.
For example, a recent Council of Europe study found “a growing tendency for member States to attach language requirements to the granting of citizenship, the right to residence, and sometimes the right to enter the country in the first place” (Thalgott, 2017, p. V).
- 2.
As discussed in the Findings section, RLP makes a point of referring to EFA educators as ‘facilitators’. As such, the article uses this terminology as well.
- 3.
We adopt the term ‘forced migrant’ to more accurately locate our discussion. Whereas ‘migrant’ is widely deployed to cover all forms of movement – and in the process erases specific conditions under which refugees, for example, move – forced migrant draws attention to some of the specific scenarios and conditions that may themselves have specific impact on how people do their translanguaging. Perhaps most importantly, forced migrants generally have far less control than migrants in general over when and where they move, as well as far less choice about if or when to return to their place of origin. This in turn influences perceptions about the value of language learning.
- 4.
Uganda, for example, is home to over 65 spoken languages.
- 5.
This study was originally scheduled to take place from March – July 2020 using in-person interviews and participant observation. COVID-19 lockdowns prevented in-person data collection. Thus, remote data collection strategies were adopted, including video interviews and a survey.
- 6.
- 7.
Note – some genders of quoted respondents in the Findings section have been altered to protect participant identity. However, gender summary statistics in Table 1 are accurate.
- 8.
UNESCO reports the literacy rate for adults 15 years or older is 77.04% for the DRC (2016) and 34.52% for South Sudan (2018), although these statistics should be taken with caution given the difficulty of data collection in conflict-affected areas. See http://uis.unesco.org/en/country/cd and http://uis.unesco.org/en/country/ss
- 9.
As of 2021 a ‘Level 6’ is being piloted in collaboration with Edinburgh University and American University in Beirut. This serves as a bridging program for learners who have completed level 5 and are interested in pursuing (re)entry into tertiary education, whether in Uganda or elsewhere.
- 10.
These quite long class durations are in response to the logistics of travel in many locations, not least in Kampala, which make shorter classes not cost-effective for many learners.
- 11.
EFA demand regularly exceeds supply. For example, during both enrollment periods in Kampala in 2019, enrollment reached capacity by the end of the first day of the three-day sign-up period. Demand is also expressed by other stakeholders; lawyers engaged in detention monitoring visits, for example, report being asked by prison authorities whether EFA can be brought to prison inmates.
- 12.
This report on RLP’s 2018 International Literacy Day event is available here: https://www.refugeelawproject.org/index.php/blog-menu/a2j-blog/literacy-and-skills-development-on-a-continuum-the-english-for-adults-learners-point-of-view
- 13.
When asked why men also started to attend the mixed gender class, respondents weren’t yet clear why this was and were exploring ways to better understand this phenomenon.
- 14.
Machete
- 15.
For more information on the legacy of the LRA in Uganda, see Christopher Dolan’s Social Torture: The Case of Northern Uganda, 1986–2006: Berghahn Books.
- 16.
To view The New Me or We Shall Rise Again, visit https://www.refugeelawproject.org/index.php/media-center/video-advocacy-documentaries
- 17.
In Uganda, the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) has jurisdiction over refugee issues in Uganda and responsibility for implementing the Refugees Act.
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Marino, J., Dolan, C. (2021). Speaking Rights: Translanguaging and Integration in a Language Course for Adult Refugees in Uganda. In: Warriner, D.S. (eds) Refugee Education across the Lifespan. Educational Linguistics, vol 50. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79470-5_23
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