Syrian Refugee Children with Disabilities and Their Parents' Lived Experiences of Exclusion in Lebanon

• In Event: Quest for Access to Education: Experiences of In/Exclusion at the Intersection of Migration and Disability

Abstract

This article draws on empirical data collected in Lebanon in 2022, consisting of semi-structured interviews with 11 Syrian refugee children and youth with different types and severity of disabilities, and 25 Syrian families living in Lebanon, as well as 21 semi-structured interviews with representatives of organisations of people with disabilities, international and Lebanese non-governmental organisations, civil society organisations and UN agencies. Drawing on a Critical Disability Theory (CDT) lens, intersectional and multidimensional challenges experienced by Syrian refugee children with disabilities and their families in accessing education opportunities are critically examined. Most of the children who took part to the study have never been to school, but in one way or another they have all experienced ‘transgressive’ forms of learning – where their learning practices transcend narrow and traditional conceptions of learning, and how it ‘should happen’. Syrian refugee children with disabilities and their families, despite being structurally neglected and marginalized by the system, continue to resist, to exist and to claim their rights. The article makes the argument that failing to acknowledge their voices and agency within these exceptional spaces would serve to reinforce and uphold ableist, colonial and neoliberal constructions of inclusion, missing to challenge the social processes, politics, and policies that re-preoduce hierarchy of knowledge, aid and humanness. If we are to work towards a more social just education system, which can remedy and repair the education inequalities our society has created and re-created over the past decades and centuries, then we have to start from the voices and experiences that have been inadvertedly or intentionally silenced and marginalized. The silencing and lack of significant engagement and collaboration with refugees with disabilities can only exacerbate their exclusion and the structural failure of any (disability-) inclusive (education) rhetoric and/or initiative. Ignoring the valuable and necessary contributions, insights, solutions and knowledge held and provided by refugees with disabilities on issues affecting their lives reproduces intersectional systems of oppression, leaving unchallenged the systemic inequalities and exclusionary practices in place. There is no remedy, repair and justice without the recognition of these voices.

Author

• Giada Costantini, University of Birmingham