Higher education in displacement: empowering pathway or double-edged institution? Insights from Belarusian students’ experiences

Bridging forced migration and higher education (HE) studies, this study explores how HE affects the process of displacement (processual dimension) and the related reconstruction of individual identity (identitarian dimension). Detaching from the romanticized notion of education as an empowering tool, it problematizes how HE shapes the structure of opportunities and coercion throughout all phases of displacement. Drawing from in-depth interviews with displaced Belarusian students who were forced to leave the country for political reasons, the article reveals the double-edged role of universities as coercers before displacement and stabilizers after displacement. Counterintuitively, the latter case does not necessarily improve individual agency but rather is still the expression of a constrained set of choices that inevitably affects identity formation. This results in a continuous negotiation between the ‘student’ and the ‘displaced’ dimension, where intrinsic and instrumental values attributed to HE are differently arranged, supporting the analytical fruitfulness of adopting ‘displaced students’ as an analytical category.