Disrupting Categorical Assumptions: Teachers, Parents, and Refugee Children Resisting Normative Discourse in Kampala, Uganda

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Intersections of policy and practice in global migration

Proposal

In this paper I share ways in which schools, refugee parents and children protest and resist the implications of international ‘refugee vulnerability’ discourse. It stems from a qualitative collective case study based on condensed school ethnography in Kampala, Uganda in 2019, and included participatory observations in one big government school in the periphery of the city with 16% refugees, one government-aided school in the center of the city with 30% refugees, and one private Catholic school with 50% refugees in a Muslim migrant neighborhood. Alongside participatory observations, I conducted semi-structured interviews including art-based methods with refugee pupils (65), refugee parents (18), teachers (24), and refugee organizations (4). Centering around the concept of 'integration' and the 'refugee' category, the dissertation focuses on their meaning – in classroom interactions, in school policy towards refugees, and access to education and socio-economic mobility as shaped by Kampala's urban sociopolitical structure.
Critical analysis of this collective case study challenges the assumption that refugee-hood defines children’s sense of belonging and socio-economic mobility and emphasizes the importance of other aspects of their identity and the urban and pedagogical environment. In addition, the importance of the ‘refugee status’ legal shifts within the schools, depending on the financial strategies that the schools employ which in some cases, cause schools to highlight their roles as refugee-hosting institutions, and in others to minimize the significance of their pupils’ status. Furthermore, focusing on classroom interactions reveal that Western-shaped discourse on belonging and well-being is irrelevant, because of the convergent pedagogies that Kampala teachers employ. Finally, the study revealed the importance of considering socio-cultural aspects of community membership and pedagogy which contemporary discourse of educational integration of refugees mistakenly perceives as universal. As a result, research participants challenged dominant refugee discourse and resisted it in different ways.
Teachers challenging nominative discourse of vulnerability:
In Kampala schools, we witness two refugee integration discourses which influence school dynamics and how refugee children are perceived: capability and vulnerability. Unlike internationally-shaped refugee vulnerability discourse and consequential funding schemes, which are categorical and nominative, the teachers' reasoning for resource allocation was based on a relative, local, and contextual understanding of vulnerability. Teachers continuously reassessed vulnerability by looking at the pupil’s current financial situation, the addition of family members, the employment situation of the parents, and pupils’ academic and social progress regardless of the pupils’ legal status. These criteria all go into the teachers’ decision on who, what, and when each child receives support from the school’s minimal resources. Others contested this logic more generally and believed that refugees have more chances and called for a redistribution of aid. In both cases, the discourse of vulnerability and self-reliance were renegotiated within the school space.
Refugee parents protesting the consequences of targeted aid:
Refugee parents also negotiate and operationalize these narratives but in ways that differ from the schools, utilizing them to help elevate the challenges of migration and help their children’s future trajectories in Uganda. Although these are allegedly contradictory narratives, the adaption of one, does not necessarily exclude the usage of the other at the same time by the same person. The communities’ ability to support each other and their claim that they are vulnerable create tensions with the local community and again challenge the rigid and nominal categorization of vulnerability. Although urban refugees in Uganda navigate the challenges of integrating in Kampala by claiming vulnerability, it has negative consequences on their relationships with the host society and they often spoke about the blurredness of these categories and the stain it put on their relationships with host urbanites.. The ensuing aid that urban refugees receive because of their categorization as vulnerable is critical for their survival but also negatively affects their position in society and their relationships with locals.
Refugee children contesting the ‘privileged’ status of being an urban refugee:
The refugee children who participated in the study revealed a deep appreciation of the opportunities that the combination of targeted aid and close ties within the refugee community provided them with. Interestingly, regardless of the school they attended, the children rarely discussed their refugee status or the resources available to them. Instead, they identified themselves as "people," Ugandans, or based on their ethnicity. However, they were aware of their special status and recognized the opportunities it presented for shaping their futures. The children did not view themselves as intrinsically vulnerable or adopt a victim narrative. They considered "refugee-ness" as an administrative category that made them eligible for unique opportunities rather than defining their identity. Additionally, the children understood their obligation to assist Ugandans in need while acknowledging that local services were available to both refugees and nationals. Despite being theoretically eligible for support, scholarships, and resettlement, the children recognized the challenges they faced in reality, such as financial struggles. Nonetheless, they were grateful for the support provided through their vulnerable categorization and questioned the relevance of their legal status as a defining factor in their lives. While being very grateful for the support this categorization offers, they question their status – which they perceive as privileged- and, yet again, question the relevance of their legal status as a defining factor.
Significance of the study:
As more refugees are moving to cities and living alongside their host communities, particularly in conflict-neighboring, low-income countries, we must ask ourselves about the meanings and implications that legal definitions and targeted aid have on refugee and host communities. Spencer and Charsley (2021) suggest that besides learning more about the plight of refugees in urban Global South contexts, such studies allow us to reexamine concepts at the core of refugee studies , expand and imagine other models of ‘integration’. Furthermore, in a rapidly changing and diminishing funds from international donors, nominal categories of vulnerability are also no longer liable, and I believe that the ideas that the research participants in this study suggest - such as looking at vulnerability as temporary, rather than nominal – should be considered and developed further by scholars and INGOs.

Author

• Manya Oriel Kagan, The University of Pennsylvania