Teaching beyond rescue-liberation discourses: Critical Refugee Studies in action in a U.S. secondary social studies classroom

Drawing on a year-long study, this article explores the pedagogical practices of a U.S. secondary social studies teacher working with refugee-background students. Framed by Critical Refugee Studies, a theoretical approach that critiques dominant humanitarian, saviorist, and assimilationist discourses while centering refugees as active agents of political and social critique and as producers of their own epistemologies, this study examines how the teacher engages refugee-background students in his social studies classroom and how the ideas of Critical Refugee Studies are reflected in his instructional and pedagogical approaches. The findings highlight several key dimensions of his practice: foregrounding historical and contemporary forms of oppression and injustice relevant to refugee-background students’ lives; challenging colonial discourses and U.S. saviorism in global displacement and refugee production; and leveraging refugee-background students’ lived experiences and their historical and socio-cultural knowledge while foregrounding their agency and resilience. Ultimately, this study calls for a reimagining of refugee education that moves beyond discourses of trauma, victimization, and rescue-liberation and instead embraces more critical, empowering, and transformative pedagogies in secondary social studies classrooms.