Speaking Rights: Translanguaging and Integration in a Language Course for Adult Refugees in Uganda

Abstract

For decades, many countries have kept refugees in settlements separated from local populations, making ‘integration’ a chimera. More recently, however, governments and international organizations have advocated for greater refugee integration and framed education as key to this process. For adult refugees, education in the place of asylum often focuses most heavily on language learning. This chapter explores the Refugee Law Project’s (RLP) English for Adults (EFA) program – the largest language education program for adult refugees residing in Uganda. This chapter describes how educators in the program enact a translanguaging pedagogy and explores what educators and students think about these non-traditional teaching practices. The chapter shows how educators take on the role of detective, co-learner, builder and transformer (Garcia O, The linguistic integration of adult migrants. Degruyter, 2017) to help students develop language skills and a sense of empowerment and belonging during their stay in Uganda. This chapter represents an initial effort – the first case study of one of the few adult refugee language courses in one of the world’s largest refugee hosting countries. Future studies should build on these findings with more learner perspectives and quantitative data to trace how the EFA program impacts its learners.