Highlighted Session: Rethinking Education in Emergencies: Critical Reflections on the Sector

Group Submission Type: Highlighted Paper Session

Proposal

Education in emergencies (EiE)—including contexts of armed conflict, epidemic, disaster and other crises—has risen on international aid agendas over the last two decades, leading to an expansion of EiE-focused global policies, targeted funding, networks of actors, and interventions. Yet critical engagement on EiE, including issues of responsibility, power, and entrenched structural inequities, have lagged in comparative and international education scholarship and humanitarian practice.

The humanitarian arena, including organizations and actors working to improve education in settings of crisis, has faced increased criticism in recent years (Ali & Murphy, 2020; Barnett, 2021). In particular, critics have identified stark inequities and injustices in the EiE sector (Brun & Shuayb, 2023; Oddy, 2020). As the presenters in this panel will discuss, such inequities manifest in several ways, such as organizational motivations and priorities in EiE aid; the reproduction of coloniality and racism in the sector; and the treatment of refugee students within their host communities. While some practitioner groups in humanitarianism have acknowledged a need to rethink education in emergencies, this panel points to the deep and structural work that needs to be done in order to address inequities and bring about greater justice within EiE research, policy, and practice.

The panelists present different perspectives on and approaches to rethinking education in emergencies scholarship, policy, and practice, introducing original research through a range of frameworks and methodological approaches. The first paper provides a critical reflection on the geopolitics of aid to education and the many ways in which security and military goals have become intertwined with educational funding and programming. This paper also grapples with the New Cold War and its potential impacts on educational global governance in conflict-affected settings. The second paper examines the ways in which traditional political economy theoretical approaches may change under a responsibility sharing model of refugee education, with implications for equitable education practice. The third paper explores the limited attention paid to racial inequities in global education circles and in the EiE sector, and aims to advance philosopher Charles Mills’ concept of White ignorance for understanding racialized hierarchies and colonial legacies in education in emergencies. The fourth paper examines the rights of refugees and migrants through the lens of racial capitalism, with a focus on refugee teachers and teachers of refugee students. The author argues that education in many EiE contexts indicate the potential for racialized exploitation or expropriation through capitalism. And the fifth paper presents a case study of a school in Lebanon that protected the rights of refugees, advancing an anticolonial framework for understanding refugee education. The author applies the concept of “ordinary solidarities” to examine how this school sustained learning for refugees despite overwhelming challenges, arguing that ordinary solidarity promotes anticolonialism for rights-based interventions.

Aligned with the conference theme, “The Power of Protest,” the panellists’ critical approaches aim to push against and protest current conditions in EiE. Together, the papers hope to generate a deep and perhaps uncomfortable conversation on the nature of education in emergencies research, policy, and practice, and on how re-conceptualizing the sector might contribute to structural change.

Following a brief introduction by the Chair and presentations of the five papers, the Discussant will reflect on key themes based a longstanding and deep engagement with the sector. The panellists will then engage in conversation with audience member questions, observations, and experiences in EiE.

References:
Ali, D. & Murphy, M. R. (2020). Black Lives Matter is also a reckoning for foreign aid and
international NGOs. Open Democracy.
Barnett, N.M. (2021). Humanitarian organizations won’t listen to groups on the ground, in part
because of institutionalized racism. Washington Post. June 8.
Brun, C. & M.Shuayb (2023) Twenty years of the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies: towards a new ontology and epistemology, Globalisation, Societies and Education, DOI: 10.1080/14767724.2023.2191936
Oddy, J. (2020). We need to start talking about race, power and privilege in the education in
emergencies sector. Medium. https://medium.com/rethinking-education/we-need-to-start-talking-about-race-power-and-privilege-in-the-education-in-emergencies-sector-51cf06ac202a

Sub Unit

• Education in Conflict and Emergencies SIG

Chair

• Ritesh Shah, University of Auckland

Individual Presentations

• The Geopolitics of Aid to Education: From Post 9/11 realities to the New Cold Wars - Mario Novelli, University of Sussex

• Political Economy of Refugee Education - Sarah Dryden-Peterson, Harvard Graduate School of Education; Shelby F Carvalho, Harvard University

• Exploitation and expropriation: the tangled web between refugee rights, capitalism, and race - Ritesh Shah, University of Auckland

• Ordinary Solidarities in Refugee Education Response - Zeena Zakharia, University of Maryland College Park