How Can Universities Commit to Design and Implement Inclusive Practices for Forced Migrants?

In many European countries, since 2015 with the so-called “European Refugee Crisis”, universities started to promote different initiatives in favour of asylum seekers and refugees. Such initiatives involve traditional academic activities, namely scientific research and training, but they also have original patterns, becoming an interceptor of specific social needs and advocating inclusive projects. Since the academic year 2015-16, the University of Pavia, located in Northern Italy, enrolled a group of students holding international protection, waiving their tuition fees for the duration of their courses. Moreover, the University guaranteed a range of other services, in connection with both the academic community and the local environment. Since its beginning, this ambitious project, shaped within MIGRAT.IN.G, the University strategic theme that involved over 100 researchers with different background that worked together on migration, has offered a unique and concrete higher education opportunity to involved students. Furthermore, it aimed at building a model of inclusion based on two main pillars: contributing to a counter-narrative about forced migration, moving beyond stereotyped representations of refugee as victim or profiteer; and fighting against the dispersion of talents. The paper focuses on the pioneering experience of the University of Pavia in order to understand whether and to what extent academy, through its own resources and good practices, can contribute to co-design and implement inclusion policies for forced migrants. Thus, together with a brief outline of the main similar projects carried out in the last years in other European university, a socio-demographic overview about forced migrants residing in Europe are provided to contextualize the urgency and the importance to make the higher education institutions’ offer more inclusive to this peculiar sub-population to avoid their brain waste.