Abstract:
Systemic human rights abuses, conflict, war, and violence have increased humanitarian migration over the last decades. The United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees (2020) reports that there are almost 82 million forcibly displaced people worldwide. Of this population, it is estimated that 42% are children below 18 years of age. Research suggests that participation in sport and physical education (PE) can assist young people with refugee backgrounds by increasing their well-being, feelings of social inclusion and a sense of belonging as part of their settlement journey (Bartsch et al., 2021; Spaaij et al., 2019). Through a narrative review approach (Bryman, 2015), this study critically examines a particular, relatively under-researched, aspect of this body of literature that addresses the pedagogies implemented when educating young people with refugee backgrounds in sport and PE. Peer-reviewed publications in English were identified for consideration in the study using six electronic databases: Scopus, SPORTDiscus, EBSCOhost, ERIC, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. The keywords “sport,” and “physical education” were combined with refugee descriptor keywords “refugee,” “asylum seeker,” “forced migrant,” and “forced migration,” as well as keywords related to teaching and learning such as “teaching”, “coaching”, “programs”, “interventions”, "pedagogy", and "pedagogies". This led to 29 publications between 2006 and 2021 being used in the study for systematic analysis. The study identified three key themes: (1) the connection between sport and PE participation in assisting the settlement of young people with refugee backgrounds; (2) the cultural deficit perspectives of young people with refugee backgrounds that surface in the sport and PE literature; and (3) the benefits of exercising community-based participatory action research (CBPAR) as a pedagogical approach to co-designing sport and PE programs alongside young people with refugee backgrounds rather than for them. We contend that future studies on the pedagogies implemented when educating young people with refugee backgrounds in sport and PE should focus on a more critical and transformative paradigm. By doing so, it is suggested that researchers can ensure that the voices of young people with refugee backgrounds are not marginalized within the literature. Further, a more holistic and inclusive lens is applied to the issue of how to challenge and change the cultural deficit perspectives of young people with refugee backgrounds in sport and PE moving forward.