- Title
- Gendered Precarity, Intersectionality and Barriers to Higher Education for Women Seeking Asylum in Australia
- Creator
- Hartley, Lisa; Field, Rebecca; Babar,; Fatema,; Atefeh,; Burke, Rachel; Baker, Sally
- Relation
- Leading change in gender and diversity in international higher education p. 47-63
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003286943-5
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2023
- Description
- The United Nations Higher Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated in 2021 that only 5 per cent of refugees have access to higher education, compared with 39 per cent of the global population (UNHCR, 2021). Without access to higher education, refugees and people seeking asylum (PSA) are denied opportunities to develop the capacities and knowledge to sustain their livelihoods and to contribute to their communities and host societies. While there are many more opportunities to engage in education in resettlement contexts, barriers persist with regard to accessing higher education. In the Australian context, as discussed in this chapter, these barriers differ depending on visa status: for permanent protection holders (refugees)—who are able to access domestic places and fee-deferral packages—the challenges are more tacit, with cultural and system-level assumptions leading to unintended exclusion (Stevenson & Baker, 2018), resulting in high levels of attrition (Molla, 2019). In contrast, for people who are on bridging visas or have been given temporary protection (PSA), the barriers are greater. If PSA are deemed eligible for protection in Australia because of their application onshore (as opposed to being offered resettlement via the “offshore program” in countries of asylum), the Departmenof Home Affairs issues them with one of two temporary visas: a three-year Temporary Protection Visa (TPV) or a five-year Safe Haven Enterprise Visa (SHEV), and pathways to permanent protection are extremely limited (Refugee Council of Australia, 2021). This hostile policy forces asylum seekers into precarity, with limited employment and education rights and a sense of hopelessness from the unlikeliness of permanency inhibiting “resettlement” or self-determining the future.
- Subject
- United Nations Higher Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); barriers to higher education; women; asylum
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1489402
- Identifier
- uon:52695
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781003286943
- Rights
- x
- Language
- eng
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