Racialised borders in refugee access to Higher education in the UK: post-colonial logics in contemporary borders and bordering practices

<p dir="ltr">Until relatively recent opportunities for refugees to access education, and the types and quality of education they receive, have tended to be discussed in a ‘refugee silo’, divorced from debates about racism and the (re)production of inequalities in education emerging from, and embedded in, colonial histories. This paper aims to open up discussion of race and racial injustice in refugee education by centring postcolonial racism in an analysis of refugee access to HE in the UK. It introduces a multiscalular analysis of how racial borders are (re) produced at a national level, and how these are reflected and refracted in borders to Higher Education. By tracing the malleability of borders in relation to some refugee groups, I highlight the mechanisms through which race has been used to curtail and control access to HE for different groups of refugees in the UK, while at the same time appearing to be racially neutral. These bordering practices produce racial hierarchies and render some refugees as ineligible and undeserving, while for other groups, borders can be made temporarily or permanently permeable.