Lemaistre, Laetitia; (2025) Acts of Quiet Rebellion: Refugee-led Education in Indonesia. Doctoral thesis (Ed.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Indonesia is often viewed as a transit country for refugees seeking to travel onwards to Australia. As a result of Australia’s extraterritorial migration policies since the 2010s, refugees in Indonesia face an impossible situation of remaining for an unknown period of forced displacement in a country that is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and does not have the legislative nor legal framework to accommodate refugees. Approximately half of the 12,600 refugees in Indonesia live in greater metropolitan Jakarta and surrounding areas. This qualitative research examines refugees’ access to education from the perspective of 33 practitioners in refugee education, a term that describes professionals working across the areas of refugee response and education provision and includes refugee educators, people with experience of forced displacement working as teachers and administrators in refugee-led learning centres. The work of practitioners in refugee education in Indonesia includes supporting access of refugee learners to the national education system as well as building capacities of refugees themselves who work as educators and administrators in parallel informal education spaces. The research is guided by the following research question: From the position of practitioners in refugee education, how do refugees engage in the provision of education for their own communities during life in displacement in Indonesia? Through semi-structured interviews with practitioners in refugee education, the research considers the opportunities available to refugees, the types of education prioritised by refugees, and how refugees conceptualise, design, and deliver education. While refugees have been granted access to the national education system through a Circular Letter issued by the Government of Indonesia in 2019, the majority of school-aged refugees attend refugee-led centres that have operated since 2014 in parallel to the formal system. The findings demonstrate that refugees thus play pivotal roles as educators and administrators in the parallel system, leading on key educational decisions such as the medium of instruction and curricula provisions as prioritised by refugee communities. While refugee-led centres do not outwardly challenge the host government, they demonstrate a defiance to the restrictive policies of the state and to what has been prescribed as ‘best practice’ by practitioners in refugee education globally. Best practice often advocates that refugees ought to attend national education systems for reasons of, for example, financing, social cohesion and integration. But refugees in Indonesia determinedly engage in educational practices they value for their own communities, aligned with their imagined futures through the programmes that are established and operationalised by and for refugees themselves. This research highlights innovations in refugee-led governance of education and provides insights into wider debates about refugee education.

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