For forcibly displaced people, high educational attainment is economically and socially empowering. Using experiences of African refugee youth in Australia as an empirical case and drawing on the capability approach to social justice, this paper aims to assess the substantiveness of education opportunities of refugees. Qualitative data were generated through policy review and semi-structured interviews. The analysis shows that not only are refugees invisible in equity policies, but educational inequality is also framed homogeneously as a lack of access. The restrictive framing disregards differences in people's ability to convert resources into valuable outcomes. Specifically, the paper identifies four overlooked factors of educational inequality among African refugee youth: early disadvantage, limited navigational capacity, adaptive preferences, and racial stereotypes. Without an expansive view of disadvantage, it is hardly possible to break the link between marginal social position and low educational attainment of refugees.