Melissa Hauber-Ozer

Builds on Norton’s work on investment to contest pervasive deficit perspectives that portray refugees as helpless victims or a public burden. Set in Türkiye, the country with the largest number of refugees in the world, this book expands the limited literature on higher education for refugees, particularly the gap in research in displacement settings. It examines the experiences of Syrian young adult refugees studying in Turkish universities, highlighting the intersections between linguistic, social, economic and structural challenges and the students’ resourceful approaches to overcoming these barriers. Their stories depict both unique and common experiences of accessing higher education during displacement and underscore the importance of quality language instruction, interpersonal relationships, and supportive faculty members. It contests pervasive deficit perspectives that portray refugees as helpless victims or a public burden and calls into question assumptions about integration in the nation of asylum being the ideal long-term outcome for refugees. The book also lays a methodological foundation for future decolonizing work in applied linguistics, centering the experiences of refugees and disrupting Northern dominance of forced migration scholarship.

Critical Participatory Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Guide brings to life key principles of this collaborative research method for students, practitioners, and research collectives. The authors encourage readers to uncover new possibilities in research guided by the emancipatory roots of CPI to deconstruct inequitable conditions and practices. Weaving together theoretical perspectives, a variety of tools for data collection and analysis, and numerous practical examples, the authors offer a complete picture of the research process from start to finish. This thoughtful and thorough book prepares readers to co-create knowledge effectively and ethically. By addressing the underlying principles common to a variety of action and participatory research methods, readers learn to design and carry out research with, not on, communities. With examples from public health, social work, psychology, education, criminal justice, conflict resolution, and more, the text is suited to a wide variety of graduate-level courses and better reflects the interdisciplinary nature of participatory research with collectives of all sizes and compositions.