Visual justice and multilingual meaning-making: refugee students’ critical engagements with wordless picturebooks

Purpose This study aims to explore how Arabic-speaking Syrian refugee students in Türkiye engage with justice-oriented wordless picturebooks as a tool for multimodal and translingual meaning-making. It investigates how visual texts can support critical literacy, emotional expression and identity among students in linguistic and socio-educational marginalisation. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative case study design was used to examine the visual, verbal and emotional responses of ten refugee students (ages 9–13) enrolled in a language support programme in Gaziantep, Türkiye. Students engaged in small-group readings, guided discussions, drawing activities and interviews centred on two selected wordless picturebooks − The Arrival by Shaun Tan and Migrants by Issa Watanabe. Data included visual artefacts, bilingual interviews, group transcripts and researcher field notes. The analysis combined thematic coding with visual grammar theory and was informed by multiliteracies, translanguaging, critical visual literacy and justice-oriented pedagogy frameworks. Findings Students portrayed interpretive sophistication, engaging critically with symbolic imagery, spatial design and emotional cues in the picturebooks. Their responses included personal associations, ethical judgements and creative re-authoring through drawing. Translanguaging was central to these processes, supporting collaborative interpretation, emotional expression and affirmations of multilingual identity. The visual texts also provided a trauma-sensitive medium for narrating migration, loss and resilience, while students’ critiques and alternative endings revealed agentive engagement and moral reasoning. Practical implications This study shows that wordless picturebooks can be valuable tools in refugee and multilingual classrooms. They reduce barriers to participation, encourage students to use their full linguistic repertoires and provide safe ways to express emotions linked to migration and displacement. Teachers can integrate these texts to promote critical thinking, identity affirmation and inclusive dialogue. Training educators in trauma-informed and translanguaging-friendly approaches will further enhance the effectiveness of wordless picturebooks, helping refugee learners engage with literacy for communication, reflection, resilience and social justice. Originality/value This study contributes to refugee education and critical literacy research by highlighting the pedagogical use of wordless picturebooks in multilingual, trauma-aware classrooms. It foregrounds refugee learners’ agency, criticality and multimodal literacies, challenging deficit discourses and offering practical insights for inclusive curriculum design.