The rise of resilience discourse in EiE policies and guidance: For whom and for what?

• In Event: New theoretical perspectives on resilience & integration

Proposal

Over the past three decades, education in emergencies (EiE) has emerged as a field of research and practice concerned with providing quality education to children and young people affected by violent conflict, human-produced and natural disasters, and displacement. Resilience—as both a concept for, and outcome of EiE programming—has been an important discourse used across humanitarian, securitisation, disaster risk reduction and development agendas within the field. In this paper, we seek to track the emergence of resilience discourses in key documentation produced by international agencies shaping the EiE agenda from 1990 onwards. We explore whether resilience has helped to consolidate potentially incompatible priorities between the aforementioned agendas and helped to mobilise a common set of responses and approaches within EiE programming supported by international actors. In particular, we are interested in the subjects of resilience and whether these tend to be conflict-affected children and teachers, schools, communities, education systems and sectors and/or the (international) agencies that support them. Exploring these subjects, we argue, allows us to better understand the underpinning locus of responsibility and control for addressing root causes and grievances underpinning conflict.

Methodologically, we explore key documents of a range of multilateral and bilateral donors in the period of 1990 – present. Documents were sourced, vetted and assessed for relevance for this study in a systematic and rigorous fashion. Based on a combination of content and textual analysis, we then seek to affirm or refute several working hypothesis based on approximately 50 key documents (for the broader content analysis) and 13 key documents (for the more focussed textual analysis). These hypotheses are as follows:

(1) In key early EiE publications, there is limited or even no use of resilience as a concept or any objective of EiE interventions, but that resilience begins to enter policy documents in the mid to late 2000s, and occupies an increasingly prominent role in more recent documents; and that following on this:

(2) The rise of resilience as an anticipated outcome of EiE / education and peacebuilding initiatives could be potentially understood within the rise of a discourse of individualism and self-reliance from the state, which has been driven by the neoliberal turn (see for example Joseph, 2013; MacKinnon and Derikkson, 2013);

(3) Following Winthrop and Matsui (2013) we expect to see a rise of resilience discourse as EiE consolidates itself as policyscape (Carney, 2010) that integrates humanitarian, security, disaster risk reduction, and development practice (see also Novelli, 2011) and that seeks to respond to and be relevant for both violent conflict, natural disaster, and other humanitarian emergencies (including refugee education);

(4) Resilience research increasingly conceptualises resilience not solely as a set of individual assets or capacities, but as an ecology, in which an individual’s internal assets are supported and strengthened by protective networks, institutions and social services (e.g. summary in Shah, 2015; Windle, 2011). In line with this resilience as a priority within EiE might focus on support for the resilient education sector, system, school or community (or indeed the resilience and ability to learn and change of donor organisations (see Komatsu and Rappleye, 2018). However, our hypothesis is that, in line with the neoliberal turn, there is a great concentration on initiatives to support resilient individuals (especially children (students) and teachers) than to foster wider resilience; and

(5) A growing focus on resilience (and adapting to and coping with crisis, change, violence and uncertainty) in policy documents is accompanied by a retreating or absent focus on education’s role in challenging and transforming the status quo, challenging and transforming conflict drivers, and contributing towards social justice (e.g. Shah, 2015; Bellino, Paulson and Worden, 2017). This is enabled by an individualised understanding of resilience, that ignores power dynamics and inequalities that drive ‘shock’ and ‘crisis’ (Evans and Reid, 2013; Reid, 2012).

Authors

• Ritesh Shah, University of Auckland

• Julia Paulson, University of Bristol

• Daniel Couch, University of Auckland