Education is a powerful tool for social mobility and cultural integration. However, it is one of the largest hurdles for migrants—particularly for forcefully displaced migrants, given their more vulnerable condition and lack of resources to pay for private education.
The paper ‘Why Student Aid Matters? Roadblocks to the Transition into Higher Education for Forced Migrants in Chile‘ explores educational gaps between migrants and natives in Chile, a country that provides free public education to newcomers.
The paper confirms previous findings that show that migrants have lower advancement and enrollment rates than natives at every school level. Moreover, it finds that financial aid applications constitute a major roadblock preventing migrant students from accessing higher education.