UNPACK-NET: Unpacking Networks in Forced Displacement and Education
UNPACK-NET investigates how social networks influence refugees’ access to and experiences of higher education pathways in Australia and the UK. It explores how relationships with people and organisations can create opportunities or barriers across migration journeys, and how inequalities, university practices and migration policies shape who can access higher education and on what terms.
Key points
- International comparison: Examining refugee education pathways in Australia and the UK, exploring how different policy and institutional contexts shape access to higher education.
- Social networks: Understanding how personal, community and institutional relationships enable or constrain access to educational opportunities, including across national borders.
- Inequalities: Exploring how gender, legal status, socioeconomic circumstances and other intersecting factors shape access to networks and support.
- Participatory research: Combining interviews, focus groups, surveys and visual social network mapping to centre refugee experiences.
- Policy and practice: Developing evidence-based recommendations and an open-access toolkit to support more inclusive and equitable education pathways.
About the project
Higher education can offer refugees opportunities for personal development, professional advancement and greater independence. Education pathways, including programmes that enable refugees to pursue university studies across borders, can provide important opportunities for education and mobility. Yet refugees often face complex admission procedures, restrictive migration policies, financial barriers and limited institutional support.
Social networks, including family, friends, universities, community organisations and other connections, may help refugees navigate these challenges. However, relationships can also reproduce inequalities, create dependencies or exclude those without access to relevant networks.
UNPACK-NET examines how these relationships develop and change across migration journeys, and how they interact with institutional structures and national policies to shape educational opportunities.
Research approach
The project adopts a comparative, mixed-methods and participatory approach, combining interviews, focus groups, surveys and visual social network mapping.
Working with refugees and refugee-background students, universities, NGOs and other stakeholders in Australia and the UK, the research examines the structure, quality and accessibility of social networks, alongside refugees’ lived experiences of education pathways.
Expected outcomes
UNPACK-NET aims to advance understanding of how social networks and institutional conditions shape access to higher education. It will produce comparative research findings, an interdisciplinary analytical framework, an open-access participatory social network analysis toolkit, and policy recommendations to support more equitable and inclusive education pathways.
Research team and international partners
UNPACK-NET is led by Dr Gabriella D’Avino, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Birmingham.
The project is undertaken in collaboration with the University of Technology Sydney, under the supervision of Associate Professor Anthea Vogl, and the University of Birmingham, under the supervision of Professor Jenny Phillimore. A secondment at SHARE Network will support international knowledge exchange and policy engagement.
Duration: October 2026 – October 2029
Funding: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Global Postdoctoral Fellowship, Horizon Europe (Grant Agreement No. 101278312). View the project on CORDIS.
Contact: g.davino@bham.ac.uk