The largest refugee crisis in 21st century arose along the aggravation of the conflict in Syria. Syrian refugee children have been exposed to various educational activities, including those organized by refugees themselves. Those refugee-run schools have served to expand the educational access to refugee children. Most of previous studies, however, shed light on the negative aspect of refugee-run schools, considering that they convey a sense of hatred and revenge to younger generation. This negative image has composed the mainstream discourse, while empirical evidence has not been sufficiently provided. Although Syrian refugees established 500 schools in Turkey, they are recently forced to close or be under control of public authority.
The purpose of this study is to explore how the refugee children’s experiences at refugee-run schools are reflected in their lives, applying life course approach. This approach is a multi-dimensional framework to analyze the individual school experience of each refugee child on the long term, and help understand the collective dynamics of refugee children’s lives. The first series of fieldwork was conducted during 2013-2015 in Turkey to explore refugee students’ experiences at refugee-run schools. The data was collected mainly by interviews at eight Syrian refugee-run schools (primary/secondary). The next fieldwork to track the students’ pathway will be in summer 2017.
The last research result shows two main features of students in refugee-run schools: (1) Sense of unity: While the Syrian society is now seriously divided, refugee-run schools foster a sense of unity among students. (2) Autonomy in mind: Since all the procedures to start a school were done by refugees themselves, refugee-run schools was found to be the source of self-esteem of students as well as teachers and managers.
Although the research has studied children’s current experience as students, further fieldwork is to be conducted to cover their next life stages.
