Abstract
Over the past few decades, forced migration driven by climate change, conflict, and other crises has risen sharply. Against this backdrop, traditional models of intergenerational knowledge transmission are being disrupted, while many long-held assumptions about education are facing unprecedented challenges. The book Educating the Next Generation: Reflections on Crises, Migration, and Education examines the ontological, ethical, and political dilemmas faced by migrant children. Drawing on case studies, interviews, surveys, and other research methods, this book puts forward innovative educational perspectives, aiming to respond to the educational crisis arising from large-scale migration.
This volume comprises twelve chapters. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction, presenting the research background and outlining a number of core concepts. It guides readers into the volume's examination of migrant education. In Chapter 2, Wills Kalisha and Tomasz Szkudlarek redefine the “next generation” from a spatial lens. Building on this, in Chapter 3, Lana Parker draws on Heidegger and Levinas to investigate the uniqueness and experiences of migrant and refugee children. In Chapter 4, Anna Kirova adopts a generative phenomenological perspective to examine the educational significance of “foreignness” in intergenerational relations. The increasing presence of displaced children in schools prompts Joris Vlieghe and Piotr Zamojski, in Chapter 5, to scrutinize the limits of two mainstream educational approaches–integration and inclusion, and to propose “educational generosity” as an alternative.
Adopting an ecological lens, the second part investigates migrant education amid the global climate crisis. Chapters 7 and 8 examine how educational methods can help climate refugee populations cope with disasters, which broadens the scope of the discussion on education for forced migration. The third part of the book offers practical responses to the preceding theoretical discussions on migrant education. Chapter 9, by Eivind Larsen, underscores the importance of teachers’ practical wisdom and ethical decision-making when responding to conflicts of uncertainty. Drawing on a failed Norwegian language teaching lesson, the authors of Chapters 10 and 11 examine the difficulties and possibilities of language teaching. From this, they derive the concept of “multicultural tact,” calling for the careful selection of teaching content and underscoring the importance of strengthening teachers’ cultural sensitivity.
This book has several notable strengths. First, the most prominent strength lies in how the contributors examine migrant children's situations through theoretical perspectives from anthropology, philosophy, and psychology. This approach makes the study of refugee education issues both accessible and richly layered. As ongoing geopolitical conflicts and climate change continue to generate more forced migrants, education for forced migrants has become an important issue in global governance. By incorporating case studies of refugee populations and expert viewpoints, the discussion remains consistently grounded in real-world problems.
Second, from a global perspective, the authors redefine the scope of “the next generation.” Children from other countries are often not recognized by the host country's mainstream society as belonging to its conception of the next generation. Therefore, the authors propose a proximity-based understanding, expanding the scope of the next generation to include migrant groups from neighboring regions. Furthermore, Chapter 5 contends that the fundamental premise of education is our coexistence in one shared world, and that the key to education lies in transmitting this common world onward. Confronting an ever more interconnected world, Simone asserts in Chapter 6 that children ought not to be simply categorized as members of a nation, culture, or school, but should instead be nurtured toward a sense of belonging to the world. These points collectively further highlight the book’s unique global perspective on migrant education.
Third, the highlight of the book is its adoption of a child-centered perspective to analyze the unique experiences of migrant children. These children, separated from their homeland, face multiple forms of rejection in their host communities. However, Parker draws on Heidegger's existentialist analytical method and Lévinas's theoretical framework of responsibility to examine the educational experiences of migrant and refugee children, and to explore the responsibilities education bears in such contexts. This emphasis addresses an aspect of existing research that has paid less attention to the perspectives of migrant children themselves.
Finally, Chapter 12 challenges the traditional educational philosophy rooted in the nation-state, revealing its misalignment with prolonged refugee displacement. By shifting the educational goal from “rebuilding citizenship” to “leading to freedom,” the volume redefines education: it is not merely a tool for cultural adaptation or identity formation, but a practice oriented toward freedom and the restoration of human dignity.
Although this book offers many strengths in its exploration of forced migration education, it has limitations. For instance, as the authors themselves acknowledge, the majority of the chapters focus on the educational issues of migrants in Western countries. Yet forced migration is a global challenge, and vast number of displaced refugees are hosted in other regions of the world. Had the authors incorporated cases from a wider range of geographical settings, such as Turkey, currently the country hosting the largest number of refugees in the world, and pursued a comparative analysis of migration education, the book would have made a stronger contribution to the field.
Overall, this book combines academic depth with practical relevance. In contrast to economically driven voluntary migration, its focus on forced migration helps clarify how education systems can respond to displacement. Moreover, the book focuses on urgent crises in the field, and its analyses can inform humanitarian assistance and social resettlement policies. As such, it is recommended for educators, policymakers, and researchers interested in forced migration and education, as it provides valuable insights. Also, it will raise people’s awareness of taking educational action to address displacement and crises.
