The world is facing an unparalleled refugee crisis. For Western educational researchers, the response to this crisis has largely been to explore how schools and pedagogy might respond to the challenge of integrating refugees (“newcomers”) into Western societies. The crisis of refugee education, however, is not one that predominately takes place in Western classrooms; rather, it is a global challenge, which—like global environmental destruction—requires a new way of thinking about our “next of kin,” as well as a re-framing of what education is for. This chapter critically reflects on the purpose of education outside the nation-state system. It does so by first reviewing a selection of Western perspectives on the purpose of education before looking at the perceived purposes of refugee education, as it is described in forced migration literature. I argue that Western educational philosophy and thinking is deeply rooted in the idea of the nation state, wherein the aims of education and schooling are tightly knit to nation-building, socialization, and the training of the next generation to be productive and democratically minded citizens. But to what extent are these aims and purposes universal? Are they transferrable to contexts of protracted displacement, where refugees on average spend 20 years living “in limbo” outside the global nation-state structure (Dryden-Peterson et al., Sociol Educ 92:346–366, 2019)? Based on a review of forced migration literature, I identify the following rationales for providing education in protracted refugee situations: (a) employment and self-reliance, (b) safety and protection, (c) securitization, (d) peacebuilding and reconstruction, (e) “Durable Solutions,” and (f) hope and emancipation. The dominant aim of refugee education, however, seems to be the re-establishment of citizenship and the solution of the “refugee problem.” Ultimately, this chapter seeks to incite our thinking around what is (or should be) the purpose of education in stateless and futureless contexts. It suggests re-framing refugee education as a pathway toward freedom, as opposed to a pathway out of displacement.