Schooling of Refugee Children in Kampala, Uganda: Enacting Vulnerability and Self-Reliance Integration Discourse

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session Sixteen
  In Roundtable Session: Perspectives on Global Immigrant/Migrant Education (Table 4)

Abstract

My research aims to explore the perspective of refugee children on their integration in primary schools in Kampala, Uganda. My research indicates that their experiences are not necessarily shaped by their legal status but by international discourse describing them as vulnerable and by the government’s expectations for them to be independent. Their social integration is constructed within the classroom interactions with the teacher, for which an individualistic and western gaze is inadequate. This case study suggests that we need more studies on refugees outside the Global North not only because of the magnitude of this phenomenon but because of the unique global insights studying refugee children can provide us regarding discourses of childhood, belonging, and pedagogy.

Author

• Manya Kagan, University of Pennsylvania
  Presenting Author