North/South Hierarchies: The Coloniality of Refugee and Asylum Seeker Access to Education as an Epistemic Good

This conceptual piece explores the differential treatment of refugee and asylum-seeker access to higher education as an epistemic good within host-nation states along racialized hierarchies and geographies.By drawing on Fricker's concept of epistemic injustice, this work problematizes the discourses of deservingness in relation to refugees and asylum-seekers of the Global South accessing such state goods of the Global North; and the power relations that undergird constructions of humanity.The paper discusses barriers to refugee and asylum-seekers with respect to policies and practices within higher education in host nations of the Global North, in particular, the UK and EU; and how such policies and state actions operate against the backdrop of whiteness and coloniality.The paper outlines extant policies pertaining to the rights of refugees and asylum-seekers in accessing education; the politics of othering people of the Global South; and explores the possibilities for anti-colonial resistance and racial equity in education in the European context and beyond, as refugee populations are projected to surge across the globe.