Voices of Change: How Public Attitudes Shaped Refugee Education Policies During 2015 EU Refugee Management Crisis

During the 2015 refugee management crisis, European Union member states struggled to uphold the international standards of high quality and accessible education to refugee children, which triggered countries to formulate and implement new national refugee education policies. This study examines how public attitudes towards refugee education, migration, and integration influenced primary education policies for refugee children during the crisis in the Netherlands and Sweden. Consequently, the following research question is posed: how do public attitudes influence national refugee education policies in the European Union? By answering this question, this study fills in significant research gaps in comparative education and migration policy literature and meets two main objectives: (1) to enhance the theoretical understanding of how public attitudes shape national refugee education policy formulation and implementation in the EU and (2) to analyze the roles and influence of interest groups and the general public in shaping refugee education policymaking. I employ a comparative case study (CCS) methodology combined with a comparative process tracing (CPT) approach. In summary, I demonstrate that the primary education policies for refugee children during the crisis generally reflected societal attitudes and interests. Interestingly, however, it seems that while politicians are responsive to both the unorganized public (i.e., voters) and the organized interest groups, the bureaucracy is mainly responsive to the policy preferences of the organized interest groups. The actions of politicians align closely with their voters attitudes towards migration, integration, and refugee education and the interests of the interest groups. These stakeholder groups generally advocated for new refugee education policies that only slightly differed from the existing policies. Based on these findings, I propose policy recommendations as well as recommendations for future research.