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Paper short abstract:

Despite the right to education being universally recognized, in Northern Ireland young people (near age 16) of asylum backgrounds are faced with infrastructural and systemic deterrents to education access similar to adults. This compounds the uncertainty of their future and needs to be addressed.

Paper long abstract:

In the UK, the Home Office is known for creating hostile environments for asylum-seekers; yet many other departments and authorities, responsible for ensuring further needs of newcomers, are also part of the politics of uncertainty. Education is one such area. Despite there being education laws that apply to all four constituent nations, education is a devolved power to each of the UK regional governments. In Northern Ireland (NI), the infrastructures of education are particularly convoluted due to decades of sectarian conflict. Thus, when asylum-seekers attempt to access education opportunities, the peculiar structure generates complications. However, beyond the complicated education infrastructure, young people from asylum backgrounds are repeatedly deterred from accessing education (despite their rights) in several ways. Through ethnographic research with a community group and interviews with 16 year old+ people of both refugee and asylum-seeker backgrounds in NI, details of these barriers are revealed. As a result of “school leaving” practices, asylum-seekers who arrive in NI near or around age 16 and wish to access schools have been and are being denied enrolment. Additionally, encounters with the Education Authority Northern Ireland (EANI), responsible for providing educational opportunities to newcomers, can leave these young people or guardians discouraged. Rather than school places, adult routes are recommended due to a combination of factors, such as the school-leaving age in NI, language barriers or missing paperwork documenting educational history. Consequently young people, like adults, from asylum-seeker backgrounds must navigate education alone or with little support, compounding uncertainties of their situation in NI.