Advancing Social Justice for Asylum Seekers and Refugees in the UK: An Open Education Approach to Strengthening Capacity through Refugee Action’s Frontline Immigration Advice Project
Koula Charitonos, Carolina Albuerne Rodriguez, Gabi Witthaus, Carina Bossu,
Journal of Interactive Media in Education,
May 13, 2020
This paper describes the Frontline Immigration Advice Programme (FIAP) in the U.K. developed by the charity Refugee Action. The most valuable part of the paper (for me, at least) is the discussion of the role of open education in promoting social justice (though I would not depict social justice merely as a "lens" through which to view such programs). The challenge lies in defining social justice without formalizing it into a rulebook; this paper takes a broadly Rawlsian approach, following Fraser ("social justice as both an outcome where 'all the relevant social actors… participate as peers in social life' and a process in which procedural standards are followed 'in fair and open processes of deliberation'"). The most important finding, I think, is that "developing skills and knowledge in itself is not sufficient... instead, training has to be accompanied by support to organisations to review and reorganise the work environment." (p.s. I would note that this was not an open education project, and should not have been represented as one in the title and through most of the paper). Image: Refugee Action.
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