[Edling] CfP: Language and Education Special Issue Language and Literacy in Refugee Education: An Asia-Pacific Perspective

Thu Oct 15 02:08:42 UTC 2026

Special Issue Editors
Hyun-Sook Kang, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign hka at illinois.eduMun Woo Lee, Yonsei University munwoo at yonsei.ac.kr

Language and Literacy in Refugee Education: An Asia-Pacific Perspective

Forced displacement has reached unprecedented levels worldwide, making refugee education an increasingly important concern in language and education research (UNHCR, 2025). Language and literacy are central to refugee learners' educational experiences because they shape access to schooling, participation in classroom learning, identity negotiation, social inclusion, and future opportunities (Barton, 2001; Dooley & Thangaperumal, 2011; Dryden-Peterson, 2021b; Reddick & Chopra, 2023). Although scholarship on refugee education has expanded considerably, it has focused predominantly on North America and Western Europe, where refugees are largely examined within relatively established settlement systems (Burgess & Rowsell, 2020; Panagiotopoulou & Rosen, 2018). Consequently, considerably less attention has been paid to the countries of Asia and the Pacific, where refugee-background learners frequently navigate multilingual educational environments across transit and settlement contexts.

In many Asia-Pacific settings, refugee-background learners develop literacy while simultaneously learning the host-country language, maintaining their home language, and, in many cases, acquiring English as an additional language (Benson & Kosonen, 2013; Dryden-Peterson, 2021b). These multilingual experiences intersect with interrupted schooling, educational transitions, language policy, identity negotiation, and experiences of belonging, yet remain comparatively underexplored in the literature (Aleghfeli et al., 2025; Kang & Jang, 2024; Karlin & Kang, 2025; Lee, 2014). Greater attention to these contexts can broaden current understandings of refugee education by highlighting how language and literacy mediate educational participation, multilingual development, and social justice across diverse Asia-Pacific settings.

This Special Issue aims to address this gap by bringing together theoretically and methodologically diverse studies that examine the role of language and literacy in shaping the educational experiences of refugee-background learners across the Asia-Pacific region. It provides a forum for advancing research on multilingualism, literacy, migration, and educational equity while foregrounding the distinctive educational realities of refugee learners in the countries of Asia and the Pacific.

Rationale and Aims

This Special Issue seeks to contribute to ongoing conversations about language, literacy, migration, and education by offering new insights into how refugee-background learners navigate language, literacy, and educational participation across diverse Asia-Pacific contexts. It builds on and responds to the following needs:

   - To broaden refugee education research beyond its predominant focus on North America and Western Europe by foregrounding the distinctive educational realities of the Asia-Pacific region.
   - To examine how language and literacy shape refugee-background learners’ access to education, identity negotiation, multilingual development, and experiences of belonging across refugee-receiving, transit, and settlement contexts.
   - To advance contextually grounded understandings of the relationships among multilingualism, mobility, educational participation, and social justice.

By doing so, the Special Issue aims to:

   - Showcase research on language and literacy in refugee education across diverse educational, sociolinguistic, and geopolitical contexts in the Asia-Pacific region.
   - Highlight the role of language and literacy in supporting refugee-background learners’ educational participation, identity development, multilingual repertoires, and educational trajectories across school, family, and community settings.
   - Contribute to a more nuanced understanding of refugee education and inform language-in-education policies and pedagogical practices that promote multilingualism, educational equity, and social inclusion.

References

Aleghfeli, Y. K., McIntyre, J., Hunt, L., & Stone, C. (2025). Safety, belonging and success in education for refugees in Europe: A systematic review. European Journal of Education: Research, Development and Policy, 60(1), e12852. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.12852

Barton, D. (2001). Directions for literacy research: Analysing language and social practices in a textually mediated world. Language and Education, 15(2–3), 92–104. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500780108666803

Benson, C., & Kosonen, K. (Eds.). (2013). Language issues in comparative education: Inclusive teaching and learning in non-dominant languages and cultures. Sense Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6209-218-1

Burgess, J., & Rowsell, J. (2020). Transcultural-affective flows and multimodal engagements: Re-imagining pedagogy and assessment with adult language learners. Language and Education, 34(2), 173–191. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2020.1720226

Dooley, K. T., & Thangaperumal, P. (2011). Pedagogy and participation: Literacy education for low-literate refugee students of African origin in a Western school system. Language and Education, 25(5), 385–397. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2011.573075

Dryden-Peterson, S. (2021). Toward cognitive and temporal mobility: Language considerations in refugee education. The Modern Language Journal, 105(2), 590–595. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12728

Kang, S. J., & Jang, E. Y. (2024). Dialogue within and dialogue between: A duoethnography of two researchers in the field of North Korean refugee education. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 28(9), 1771–1788. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2022.2035438

Karlin, G., & Kang, H. S. (2025). Refugee learning center in Indonesia: A habitat for refugee well‐being in transit. European Journal of Education: Research, Development and Policy, 60(1), e12926. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.12926

Lee, M. W. (2014). A participatory EFL curriculum for the marginalized: The case of North Korean refugee students in South Korea. System, 47, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2014.09.001

McBrien, J. L. (2005). Educational needs and barriers for refugee students in the United States: A review of the literature. Review of Educational Research, 75(3), 329–364. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543075003329

Panagiotopoulou, J. A., & Rosen, L. (2018). Denied inclusion of migration-related multilingualism: An ethnographic approach to a preparatory class for newly arrived children in Germany. Language and Education, 32(5), 394–409. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2018.1489829

Reddick, C., & Chopra, V. (2023). Language considerations in refugee education: Languages for opportunity, connection, and roots. Language and Education, 37(2), 244–261. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2021.1983588

UNHCR. (2025). Global trends: Forced displacement in 2025. https://www.unhcr.org/media/global-trends-2025-report

Submission Instructions

Submission Instructions

Particularly, we are interested in contributions that examine the role of language and literacy in the educational experiences of refugee-background learners and families across the Asia-Pacific region. We welcome studies situated in refugee-receiving, transit, settlement, borderland, and transnational contexts. Quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, ethnographic, participatory, and practitioner-oriented studies from diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives are all encouraged. The topics of interest for this Special Issue may include (but are not limited to) the following:

   - Multilingualism, language learning, and literacy development among refugee-background learners
   - Identity, belonging, agency, and educational participation
   - Home, heritage, and community language maintenance
   - Translanguaging and multilingual pedagogies in refugee education
   - Language-in-education policy, medium of instruction, and educational equity
   - Digital literacy, multimodal practices, and language learning
   - Family, community, and school partnerships in refugee education

Before the submission of full manuscripts, prospective authors are invited to submit an article abstract, which will be assessed to determine whether it fits the scope of the Special Issue. Authors may still submit a full manuscript via ScholarOne without prior submission of an abstract. Abstracts should be approximately 500 words(excluding references) and should include the research context, refugee-background population, educational setting, theoretical framework, methodology, findings (or anticipated findings), and expected contribution.

Please include the authors’ names, affiliations, and contact details. Abstracts should be sent to Hyun-Sook Kang (hka at illinois.edu) and Mun Woo Lee (munwoo at yonsei.ac.kr) by 5 January 2027.

All full-length manuscripts should be submitted via ScholarOne by 30 May 2027 (expected length: 7,000–9,000 words, including the abstract, references, tables, and figures). Manuscripts should follow the submission guidelines of Language and Education. All submissions will be reviewed by the Guest Editors and at least two external reviewers. Final publication decisions will be made by the Editors-in-Chief of Language and Education following recommendations from the Guest Editors.

See the expected timeline below:

   - 5 January 2027 – Abstract submission deadline
   - 5 February 2027 – Guest Editors’ decisions and invitations to submit full-length manuscripts
   - 30 May 2027 – Full-length manuscript submission deadline
   - 30 November 2027 – First round of peer review completed
   - 15 January 2028 – Revised submissions from authors
   - 15 May 2028 – Second round of peer review completed
   - 15 July 2028 – Copyediting, production, and additional peer review
   - 15 September 2028 – Print publication

For more information, please refer to the link: https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issues/language-and-literacy-in-refugee-education-an-asia-pacific-perspective/
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