ABSTRACT
The office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees calls attention to the severe disruption of education for children in refugee camps, at both the primary and secondary levels. This chapter will examine the efforts undertaken by United Nations agencies to educate children in refugee camps, with a focus on three types of camps: those of relatively recent provenance, such as the camps set up for Syrian refugees; longstanding camps, particularly those in Kenya in which Sudanese and Somali children live and are educated; and Palestinian camps where education takes place within the context of Israeli Occupation. The questions the essay takes up include, “Who designs the curriculum in these schools?” “What is the profile of the teachers in the schools?” “What are the skills being imparted to the students?” “How do the children envision their future possibilities?” Among the principal issues the essay takes up is whether and to what extent children in refugee schools engage the idea of “citizenship,” and, if they do, what types of citizenship (national, religious, ethnic, global) they explore. If Agamben is right that the condition of displacement offers the opportunity to re-examine our current understanding of nation and borders, then it would follow that children being educated in refugee camps could provide us with innovative conceptions of “citizenship.” Does education in refugee camps lead to compliant or transformative paradigms of belonging and being, and what does such education suggest about the future of global humanity?
