Teaching in displacement: refugee teachers’ agency and the reworking of social and professional practices

This paper reconsiders how refugee teachers are understood within education and development debates by exploring their roles as agents who actively shape the social and educational worlds they inhabit. Drawing on interviews with 15 teachers with refugee backgrounds, the study examines how they navigate complex institutional and everyday constraints and maintain their professional identities and commitments to teaching. The analysis adopts an ontologically embodied lens that situates teachers’ practices within networks of social relations and shared resources. Using the concept of navigational agency, the paper demonstrates that refugee educators mobilise collective capabilities to make situated and strategic decisions in contexts marked by uncertainty and structural constraints. Findings highlight the ways in which teachers generate forms of agency that extend beyond individual survival, producing multiplier effects within their communities and contributing to the development of education as a collective good. In doing so, the paper positions refugees as central actors whose practices sustain and reshape educational and social life.