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Paper short abstract

University 'refugee education' initiatives can utilise projects creatively, but are also constrained by the short-termism, intensive labour and demand for novelty in project schemes as they grapple with competing and contradictory temporalities of education, humanitarianism and projectification.

Paper long abstract

In the aftermath of 2015’s long summer of migration, when over a million displaced people sought refuge in Europe, many universities set up higher education initiatives. These included full time preparatory programmes, alternative informal courses, scholarships, and ‘education pathways’ for refugees. Though these initiatives had different aims, politics and pedagogies, the vehicle through which many were realised were the same: projects. In part this was due to funding, with university education initiatives sitting at the intersection of academic and NGO schemes where project financing dominates. It was also due to the dialectic of crisis-response, which framed the way many states and institutions approached the situation, i.e. looking for time-bound ‘solutions’ to address issues relating to the ‘migration crisis’. Based on interviews with the academic and administrative staff who run these now decade-old initiatives in different European universities, ethnographic research at project events, as well as analysis of EU, national and institutional policies that frame or contradict funding schemes, this presentation explores how refugee education initiatives use projects creatively to keep core activities running; are constrained by the short-termism, intensive labour and demand for novelty in competitive project funding schemes; and grapple with the competing and contradictory temporalities of education, humanitarianism and projectification. It further asks if the deepening hold of projects puts the quality, expansiveness and efficacy of education at risk as 'project logics' narrow pedagogic and political possibilities, side-lining radical or alternative approaches.