Educational resilience and trust among forcibly displaced students

Abstract

Following the 2023 conflict, forcibly displaced students entered Armenia’s higher education system, raising urgent questions about integration, educational continuity, and trust in host state institutions. To investigate these issues, we surveyed 238 forcibly displaced students enrolled in Armenian universities and estimated binary logistic regression models for three outcomes: intention to emigrate, willingness to continue education in a tuition-based system, and trust in the state’s capacity to protect their rights. The predictors were organized into four blocks: demographic/economic, legal/institutional, civic/integrative, and psychological. The results show that household employment reduces emigration intention while increasing the willingness to continue tuition-based studies, whereas educational integration also promotes persistence in paid higher education. In contrast, self-acceptance and longer prior educational trajectories reduce the willingness to continue tuition-based studies, fatalistic time orientation predicts stronger migration intentions, and past rights violations are associated with higher emigration intentions while coinciding with greater institutional trust under conditions of perceived redress. Overall, these findings support a human security and sustainability perspective, demonstrating that educational resilience, institutional responsiveness, and inclusive policy design jointly shape post-conflict integration trajectories.