Crisis upon crisis – Refugees and COVID-19

Without any doubt, the refugee crisis is one of the most difficult challenges that has ever confronted international higher education. Universities around the world are being approached by unexpected guests knocking at their doors and asking for access.

Policy-makers are being forced to reform admissions procedures for international students and to consider applications from refugees who, more often than not, lack necessary qualifications or the documentation thereof, such as proof of previous academic coursework and proficiency in the host country’s language.

Inevitably, this ‘forced internationalisation’ requires universities to address serious issues: getting involved in the complex bureaucracy of assessing refugees’ (often incomplete) qualifications, providing them with financial aid and helping them overcome their traumatic experiences, while they also have to cope with social tensions due to competition for university admission with local applicants.

While universities around the world are struggling with these issues, matters have been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. Drastic measures have been taken to protect international students and help them continue their programmes remotely during the pandemic, but this is hardly an alternative for refugees due to their obvious disadvantages.

No sweet home for quarantine

Universities around the world seem to be responding to the COVID-19 crisis in the same way. They paused face-to-face classes and instead began teaching online, shut down campuses and asked students to isolate themselves at home until further notice. Meanwhile, international students were immediately advised to return to their home countries before borders closed.

These well-intentioned measures to protect students are without doubt praiseworthy. However, most refugee students do not have comfortable homes in which to quarantine themselves. Due to health-related, financial and academic disadvantages, refugee students are more vulnerable to the COVID-19 epidemic than their peers.

First and foremost, in terms of health, refugee students are more at risk than other students. Before the pandemic, most were provided with psychological support by university counselling centres. Face-to-face services are now suspended, like other on-campus services. The benefit of online psychological support is a question mark with respect to refugees.

In this turbulent time, refugee students are also financially disadvantaged. The vast majority have to work while studying, but the suspension of university services has resulted in a pause of on-campus employment. Outside of campus, the situation is worse. The economic recession caused by the pandemic and the imposition of curfews are hitting sectors where most refugees work informally, depriving them of modest incomes.

The World Health Organization has been repeatedly stating that during self-quarantine everyone should ensure good nutrition to strengthen their immune system against the coronavirus. Unfortunately, for a refugee student without a regular income, this is an unaffordable luxury.

Finally, academic challenges magnify the hardships faced by refugee students. Universities are asking international students to stay registered for online classes and complete them successfully in order to maintain their student status. However, efficiently attending online classes requires a good wi-fi connection and a computer equipped with a camera and microphone.

In order to ensure the attendance of all students on online classes, some universities in various parts of the world have started a new type of financial aid for students in need. Bogazici University in Turkey decided to pay the internet fee for two months for students who cannot afford it. Similarly, RMIT University in Australia committed to pay up to AU$1,000 to students in need of financial aid to help them cover the cost of internet connection, software, hardware, subscriptions and other digital materials.

These inclusive practices are likely to increase refugee students’ participation in online classes but are offered by very few universities. Therefore, online course requirements such as attendance check, in-class presentations, assignments and overall evaluation should be redesigned in consideration of the special circumstances of refugee students. Otherwise, online higher education is not a level playing field.

Post-COVID-19 discrimination at the door

Refugee students are facing yet another serious challenge. The coronavirus has been associated with ‘otherness’. Countries closed their borders to protect themselves from contamination originating from ‘other countries’. United States President Donald Trump called the coronavirus the ‘Chinese virus’.

At a time when ‘others’ are under suspicion, refugees – the most alien group in society – attract negative attention. Refugee camps with few COVID-19 cases in low-income regions are reported in the media as being highly dangerous places, although the numbers of coronavirus cases in big cities of higher-income countries are much higher.

Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that “there is a logical connection between migration and the coronavirus as both spread with movement”. Matteo Salvini, the populist opposition leader in Italy, blamed African migrants, arguing that “the presence of the virus was confirmed in Africa” – while the number of cases in Italy itself was considerably higher.

In pre-COVID-19 times, refugee students were already personae non grata, considered to be a financial burden to national budgets and competing with local candidates for admission to university.

With the current pandemic crisis, exacerbated by nationalism and populism, refugee students may easily become scapegoats, as they are already tarnished in the media as unhealthy and carriers of the virus.

The best way to fight this misconception is to remind people of those refugees willing to risk their lives in their host countries. There are many cases of refugees with healthcare education and experience from their home countries, currently offering their expertise to fight the pandemic, but blocked from doing so because their background is not recognised. (In the United States, undocumented immigrants working in the healthcare system are even being threatened with deportation.)

The pandemic does not create discrimination, people do. Equity must be preserved in international higher education, and individuals, rumours or ideologies must not be allowed to deprive refugees of the right to education, especially in this time of great stress for our societies.

Hakan Ergin is a lecturer at Istanbul University in Turkey, and a former post-doctoral scholar at the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College in the United States. E-mail: hakan.ergin1@yahoo.com. This article was first published in the special issue of International Higher Education.