Rights, resources and relationships: A ‘three Rs’ framework for enhancing the resilience of refugee background youth

This chapter argues that national education systems can reduce structural violence towards refugee background youths by acting to enhance the youths’ educational resilience. It aims to define educational resilience as the ability to overcome the significant challenges to learning and achieve positive educational outcomes. The chapter suggests for how the rights, resources, and relationships (three R) framework can be translated into educational policy and practice, and considers the case of refugee background youth within the education system of Aotearoa New Zealand, a society where decades of educational policy have been shaped by neoliberal ideology. Ecological models of resilience draw on Bronfenbrenner’s social-ecological model of human development, where the child is viewed as a social being who grows up nested within a unique ecology of social systems. The chapter outlines a number of ways that schools and education systems can translate three Rs concepts into practices that will enhance the educational resilience of refugee background students.