Introduction: An Educational Linguistics Perspective on Refugee Education: Bringing into Focus the Language and Literacy Dimensions of the Refugee Experience

Refugee resettlement has never been more urgent. With dramatic increases in global ethnic conflict, religious persecution, political instability, disasters caused by extreme weather, drought and famine, the number of forcibly displaced persons had surpassed 80 million by the summer of 2020 (UNHCR Press Release, December 2, 2020). In 2020, 80% of the world’s refugees were being hosted (temporarily) in developing countries (UNHCR Fact Sheet, March 2020). Recent news headlines demonstrate that the convergence of multiple global and local forces (political, economic, environmental) has created conditions of extreme uncertainty and precarity in a growing number of regions – creating unstable or unsafe conditions that have pushed large numbers of people to uproot themselves, their families and their lives in search of safety and security. New displacements are also driven by recent increases in violence in Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, Somalia, Yemen, and Central America.