areUsafe is guided by a primary research question: are universities safe spaces for displaced people? Four sub-objectives (SO) will lead the inquiry.
➢ SO1: To theorize “vulnerability” and “safeness” in relation to the nexus between displacement and higher education access and participation.
➢ SO2: To collect sets of qualitative data on displaced peoples’ higher education journey. areUsafe is design as a transnational, multi-sited, extensive ethnographic study. The data will be collected in three contexts: the North Eastern Region in India, Pakistan and Thailand.
➢ SO3: To consolidate theory and data to shed light on how universities challenge or reinforce displaced people’s experience of vulnerability. The PI anticipates mapping a complex landscape in which university might be experienced by displaced people as both life-changing and a place of exclusion or indeed a site of violence and trauma.
➢ SO4: To consolidate project outcomes with a view to policy formulation, thereby providing critical understandings for higher education policy-makers and decision-makers as to whether or not, in this neoliberal age, universities can be regarded as sanctuaries with certain moral responsibilities vis-a-vis vulnerable students.