Browsing by Subject "pakolaistaustaiset"

People with a refugee background are much less likely to participate in higher education than the general population. As Finland seeks international competence, equity in higher education opportunities and an increase in the number of university graduates, the academic potential of many refugees remains unrecognized in contradictory ways of speaking and practices. This Master's thesis examines speech on refugees’ higher education and accounts that attempt to make the question of refugee access to higher education understandable. Research focuses on the foundations of social constructionism and the discursive analytical research tradition, whereby reality is seen constructed and renewed in systems of meaning structured in speech. Meaning systems arise in the research material through the concept of interpretative repertoire. The research material consists of 13 theme interviews collected for the EUCRITE project. Interviewees are staff from Aalto University learning services and from SIMHE services of two other Finnish universities, as well as students with a refugee background from Aalto University. As a result of the analysis of the data, six different interpretative repertoires were identified: victim repertoire, threat repertoire, individualistic repertoire, equality repertoire, utility repertoire and humanistic repertoire. Through analyzing the interrelationships and power relations between the repertoires, one can conclude that the most prevalent repertoires were those that define refugees as passive victims (victim repertoire), explain access to higher education as dependent upon individuals’ own activity and self-direction (individualistic repertoire), and ignore refugees’ starting points vis-à-vis higher education (equality repertoire). On the basis of the research results, it is worth asking how international knowledge potential becomes recognized. In addition, this leads us to question how the starting points of applicants with a refugee background could be taken into account in higher education institutions, not as a threat to equality but rather as a means to achieve it.