De-bordering strategies to challenge bordering scenarios: the role of educators in adult migrant and refugee education

While there is no doubt about the depersonalising power exerted by humanitarian and emergency migration policies, it is equally necessary to recognise the decolonising power of education in creating strategies of resistance to face border proliferation. For educators working with adult migrants and refugees, this means going through a reflective process of self-decolonisation to recognise the limits and responsibilities of the contexts in which they operate. Drawing on theories of postcolonial pedagogy and decolonial literature on the migration-education nexus, this paper explores how educators counteract border regimes by deploying practices and postures that promote de-bordering and protective learning spaces. To this aim, we explore the experiences of five educators involved in the EU project 'INTE-great. Stakeholder Partnership for the Integration of Migrants', purposefully sampled from pilots on health, employment, training, and social cohesion. Through a qualitative approach, based on in-depth semi-structured interviews and a two-cycle coding of data, the following findings emerged: (1) educators have experienced either first-hand or learned in specific training how to work and deal with emergency and violent contexts; (2) educators achieve by doing the awareness of the multiple vulnerabilities affecting the migrant person; (3) they often transform training spaces into spaces of protection and mitigation.