Reflections on Covid-19 and Displaced Students: Movement as a Conceptual Framework and Suggested Research Avenues
Editor: Marie-Agnès Détourbe - INSA Toulouse / Centre for Anglophone Studies (CAS)
The ways in which people move and connect at different levels have been profoundly reconfigured by the Covid-19 pandemic: travel restrictions, border closures, as well as lockdown and curfew measures across the globe have deeply impacted mobility and led to new migration patterns. In the case of forcibly displaced students, the extent to which the pandemic has impinged on their access to higher education is still ill-known and under researched. Marie-Agnès Détourbe’s short reflection paper suggests a conceptual framework for looking at the impact of the pandemic on access to higher education for forcibly displaced students, a marginal yet growing category of less visible international students. The concept of movement is revisited by drawing on Thomas Nail’s theory of ‟the figure of the migrant,” which then frames research questions and research avenues for exploring further displaced learners’ higher education pathways during and after the pandemic.