Integrating refugees into their host society is something that is in everyone’s interests, yet it remains something that is often far from straightforward.  Kafka’esq bureaucracies can render even the most straightforward of cases torturous in their time and complexity.

The World Federation of Occupational Therapists regard a right to work as a fundamental human right, yet many refugees are denied this right while their claims are processed.  Even when they have legal status, their qualifications are often unrecognized, so they’re left performing work that is far below their previous status.

As a recent British study highlighted, refugees, like everyone else, don’t want work that simply passes their time, but rather gives them meaningful things to do.

The right credentials

Ensuring that refugees have valid credentials to enter the labor market is a consistent challenge, especially when many qualifications from their homeland struggle for acceptance in their adopted land.  A few years ago Kiron University attempted to overcome these challenges by providing refugees with access to a two year online degree program.

The German social enterprise partnered with established institutions to provide tuition via MOOCs for two years, with this then followed by two years at one of the partnering institutions.  The idea was that by the end of the four year period, the student would gain a double degree from the two institutions they had studied via.

It’s a base that a new venture, emanating from MIT’s business incubator and idea marketplace MIT Solve, aims to build upon.  The Future is Offline argues that the success of the Kiron venture could be much greater if participants didn’t require access to the Internet in order to engage with the course material.

“Kiron have been working on e-learning for refugees for a number of years with Coursera and EdX to provide free learning to refugees, but they found a real problem was the lack of Internet connectivity among refugees,” Lachal says. “Refugees are 50% less likely than the general population to have access to the Internet, and this is especially so in poorer countries, such as Burundi or Kenya, and in many refugee camps, Internet access is forbidden.”

Founder Jeremy Lachal believes that connectivity is a major barrier for many refugees, and cites figures of just 22% in rural areas. What’s more, connections that do exist are often unreliable and expensive.  As such, The Future is Offline was born out of a partnership between Kiron and Libraries Without Borders to provide offline access to digital learning resources from leading universities around the world.

Leading content

The platform has partnerships with 60 universities from 8 countries, with 205 courses provided across a range of disciplines, including in English language. There are also 17 ‘skill booster’ courses that aim to provide transferable skills to help aid any transition into the local labor market.

At the end of each course, certification is available to showcase to employers that the courses have been completed, with the option of undertaking five comprehensive study tracks to go deeper into topics, and potentially lead to degree-level courses.

The platform currently serves around 7,000 students, with the most popular courses being in areas such as computer science, business and social work. While it’s not immediately clear how effective the courses have been in securing jobs for the students, the completion rate is around 30%, which is considerably higher than traditional MOOCs, and 97% of students said that the courses helped to improve their skills, develop their language capabilities, and help them experiment with various study areas.

Course content is stored on secure digital (SD) cards to enable access at all times, with collective learning spaces also provided to help create a learning environment. The project was chosen by MIT Solve as one of the most promising solutions in its Community-Driven Innovation Challenge, which came with a prize fund of over $1.5 million.

Systemic hurdles

Of course, while lack of credentials is a significant barrier to accessing gainful employment, there remain a number of systemic challenges to overcome.  For instance, a recent study from the University of Colorado Denver highlights the barriers many refugees face and the way these heighten the risk of the refugee falling into chronic poverty.

The authors argue that by requiring refugees be financially self-sufficient in the first eight months of their arrival, the American resettlement program may actually be doing more harm than good.

“Refugees are on the lowest socioeconomic rungs in the U.S.,” they explain. “Many have a higher education or professional background in their home country, but those advantages are not fairly accounted for once they’re reduced to the category of ‘refugee.’ For those who arrive without these advantages to begin with, despite their efforts, their chance to realize social upward mobility is even lower.”

Emboldened prejudice

There is also the obvious risk of prejudice, which recent research from the University of California, Riverside, suggests may be emboldened by the kind of rhetoric deployed by Donald Trump.  The research found that exposure to his comments on Mexican immigrants made it more likely that people would excuse discriminatory behavior.

What’s more, this was especially so when those in the political elite appeared to tacitly condone his remarks.  By staying silent, they create the impression that this is normal and that previous norms of racial equality and tolerance were eroding.  This then creates less pressure for people to uphold these norms.

“The emboldening effect of an elite like Donald Trump is most pronounced in a context where citizens are given signals that the political system tolerates prejudice by allowing candidates who engage in prejudiced speech to continue their campaigns without sanction,” the researchers conclude. “Last, we find that condemnation by other elites does little to suppress prejudice once it is activated.”