Abstract

Transnational migration is not a novelty; it has been a constant element of human existence. In recent years, the question of migration has preoccupied public discourse in many countries, especially when it comes to refugees and asylum-seekers. This situation has also influenced the discourse on educational praxis and educational research, and posed the question of how educators should respond to the refugee crisis. When it comes to the educational traditions I explore in this chapter, and their relation to the question of refugees, they have focused more on migrants and the process of admission, inclusion, and citizenship, rather than on the existential state of the refugee. Even if these traditions have their differences, they share the devotion to citizenship, community, and humanity, and that a proper educational response to the refugee crisis is to be found in the universal declaration of human rights. However, when it comes to the empirical situation worldwide, this focus seems too narrow since it only includes de jure refugees and misses those who remain outside the political community. These refugees do not share the world with the rest of humankind. With the help of the works of Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben on refugees and human rights, I show that the existential dimension of the refugee is fundamental for keeping the educational question on the past and the present, the local and the global, and inhabitants and migrants, alive.