The forced displacement of people is one of the defining features of the modern age. Since the earliest period of European state formation rulers have sought to transform linguistically and ethnically heterogeneous empires into states that aspired to more exclusive identities based on common ancestry and both religious and political conformity. The impulse to expel, exchange or murder unwanted populations has become a global phenomenon, unparalleled in its scale and intensity, and widely regarded as constituting the major political, economic, social and humanitarian issue of the age (Mishra, 2017; Jarausch, 2016; UNHCR, 2016).

Yet if refugees and refugee movements are a defining feature of the modern age they continue to occupy a minor place in historiography. In comparison with other marginal groups, the working class, women or slave populations for example, both the absolute number of historical studies on refugees, and their thematic and chronological coverage, remains restricted (Gattrell, 2013; Kushner, 2006). The educational experiences and agency of refugees is a particular lacuna.

This paper begins to address the silence in the historiography of refugees and education. It is an exploratory paper that brings together the biographies of a number of refugees who arrived in the United Kingdom in the period 1914-1945 and who became associated with schemes of either formal or informal education. Drawing on a wide and diverse range of archival sources the paper asks whether there is evidence for an identifiable tradition of refugee education and to what extent, and with what consequences, it is possible to identify its distinctive concerns and practices.