Publications

M. Kagan. (Forthcoming) Schooling experiences of refugee children in Uganda:  Rethinking integration Policies. Routledge Press, Please navigate to the “book project” page for more details.

Peer-Reviewed Articles:

M. Kagan, H. Yaron, and A. Rothbard. (Forthcoming). Dangerous or Endangered: African-Israeli Children Presence in Urban Public Spaces, South Tel Aviv. Citizenship Studies.
This article explores the use of public spaces by African Israeli children in South Tel Aviv. These children were born to asylum-seekers from Eritrea and Sudan who crossed the Israeli–Egyptian border between 2006-2012 and live in Israel with no effective status. South Tel-Aviv has, in recent years, become a place of contestation and conflict, especially in connection to African asylum-seeker children and the Israeli aid organizations assisting them. The high visibility of these children in the streets coupled with the incitements against asylum-seekers and gentrification processes in the area lead to friction that makes their presence in public spaces unsafe. Drawing on ethnographic research, we analyze how the children’s presence is narrated and contested. We found it perceived as a symbol of ‘demographic concern’ that extends beyond the borders of the neighborhood and touches the nature of the Israeli state as a Jewish ethno-based or democratic state that respects human and refugee rights.

M. Kagan (Forthcoming). Navigating Conflicting Integration Perspectives: Refugee Commodification and Vulnerability in Urban Primary Schools in Uganda. Citizenship Studies.
Based on a comparative case study of three primary schools in Kampala, this article examines how international and local refugee institutions and policies shape schools’ efforts to strategize INGO and community resources when integrating refugee pupils. On the one hand, refugees and their children are considered vulnerable by international organizations and given targeted aid and attention, but on the other hand, the Ugandan government expects and discursively describes urban refugees as self-reliant and independent. Within the Ugandan urban context, rigid policy categories of self-reliance and vulnerability fail to capture the real-life dimensions that educators encounter in the schools and challenge correlations between deservingness and vulnerability. The school staff strategically deploys the vulnerability category and utilize refugee presence as a commodity or as clients, accentuating or eliminating their vulnerability to help address the school community’s needs. However, in increasingly challenging conditions, the nominal vulnerability of refugees in urban contexts does not provide a sustainable integration model, and alternative regulatory frameworks of vulnerability should be considered.

Kagan, M. and N. Shanee (2024). The uncounted and invisible challenges of refugee foster families in Kampala, Uganda. Adoption and Fostering 48(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/03085759241270364
Uganda is known for its open-door policies towards refugees, currently hosting over 1.5 million refugees, 60–65% of whom are children. National self-reliance strategies grant refugees who live in urban settings freedom of movement and employment and expect them to be mostly self-sufficient in exchange. Families within the refugee community are fostering unaccompanied refugee children, as this is considered the best solution for them by the Ugandan state and international organisations. We used ethnographic and quantitative methods, including in-depth interviews, questionnaires and participant observation, to assess the living situation of refugee foster families in Kampala. Our sample included 52 foster families who were caring for a total of 289 children. The findings raised four overarching themes: 1. Circumstances and reasoning for fostering unaccompanied children; 2. Formalisation of explicit foster registration; 3. Differences in care and living conditions; and 4. Ambiguous organisational support. Fostering was either direct by family members or friends, or indirect through the intervention of a church or UNHCR’s implementing NGOs but has never followed national processes to formalise fostering or adoption. Based on the self-reliance policies, refugee foster families in Kampala do not receive adequate support or supervision from any institution and fostered children remain acutely vulnerable, especially since the economic crises related to Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine. We argue that the lack of recognition and financial and emotional support for foster families hinders community-based solutions. These conditions, coupled with the lack of proper supervision and control, encourage less altruistic fostering and more abusive and exploitative treatment of unaccompanied children.

Kagan, M. and Winnie Nakattude (2024). “I don’t meet Somali girls because they’re not supposed to go out”: Intersectional barriers facing Somali urban refugee girls in Uganda. Girlhood Studies 17(1). https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2024.170108
We based this article on a qualitative study that focuses on barriers to the integration of Somali Muslim urban refugee girls in Uganda. We were inter- ested in how different ethnic and gender identities influence Somali refugee girls’ access to education and participation in society. Based on 75 semi-structured interviews with refugee children between 10 and 16 years of age in Kampala, we used constant comparative analysis to explore the intersectional experiences of Somali refugee girls. We found that they face specific gender-based discrimination and temporal and spatial restraints. This plays a key role in their ability to integrate into society. We conclude that it is important to avoid homogenizing refugee children’s experiences and to incorporate intersectional analysis in studying integration.

Kagan, M. Redefining integration: what can we learn from the educational experiences of refugee children in the Global South? (2022). NEOS 14(1). https://acyig.americananthro.org/neosvol14iss1sp22/
In this short piece I challenge our understanding of refugee integration as it is mainly based on research conducted in schools located in Global North settings with underlying cultural norms and social structures that often differ from how children are socialized in the Global South (Cheney 2010). Arguing that notions of well-being are culturally dependent, and children's understanding of self-realization and belonging are directly linked to community expectations (Ager et al. 2012), I argue that we must explore how members of host societies and refugees perceive belonging, membership, and well-being affect how they experience and measure integration (Driel and Verkuyten 2020). Moreover, the very understanding and the importance we ascribe to indicators such as well-being, belonging, and self-realization are embedded in individualistic, neoliberal Western discourses (Wolffernhart, Conte, and Huddleston 2019). Based on my research in Uganda I show how the local pedagogical context and community members' expectations were critical in constructing the refugees' children's experiences and were glaringly missing in the integrationist discourse.

Kagan, M., Pinson, H., Schler, L. (2022). No policies and no politics: Israeli teachers, asylum seeker pupils and remobilized strategies of avoidance and depoliticization. Race, Ethnicity and Education 25(1): 73-91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2019.1599346
Israeli teachers who teach Eritrean and Sudanese asylum-seeking children find themselves struggling to accommodate these children against the background of a polarized environment. The strategies teachers employ to cope with this tension are shaped by the broader socio-political context and the hostilities directed toward African asylum seekers in Israel. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 22 teachers in different schools in Israel, we observed that in the absence of any official educational policy for the integration, teachers employ strategies of avoidance and de-politicization of asylum-seeking. We argue that when it comes to the controversies around asylum seekers, Israeli teachers adopt strategies that are similar to the ways they have coped with the long-term Israel-Palestinian conflict. Based on this observation, the paper suggests the local socio-political context is crucial in understanding teachers’ attitudes, practices and responses towards asylum-seekers.

Kagan, M. and Y. N. Gez (2021): “We are everywhere”: International and local aspirations at Bridge International Academies in Kenya. Critique of Anthropology 41(4): 389-404. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275X211059661
The association between aspirations and education across the African continent is widely recognized. However, it is only in recent years that scholars began observing this connection in the context of the booming low-fee private schools (LFPS) sector. In this article, we consider the case of one of Kenya’s most prominent LFPS actors, a chain of primary schools called Bridge International Academies (BIA). Despite catering for a lower-class clientele, BIA bears ostensible markers of privilege, in the form of a veneer of internationality and intensive application of technology. Indeed, while BIA’s main promise relates to performance on the critical Kenyan Certificate Primary Education exam as a gateway to a better future, such promises are profoundly infused with ideas that appear disconnected from the harsh material conditions of the schools’ clients and staff. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in BIA schools in Nairobi focused on teachers and staff, we show the appeal of the language of internationalism to socio-economically marginalized Kenyans and consider its multiple interpretations within local imaginations.

Book Chapters:

Kagan, M., E. Owino, E. Masese and J. Rey (2024) “Adopting and Adapting Waldorf Education: Returning to the roots through Waldorf education in Kenya”. In: Critically Assessing the Reputation of Waldorf Education in Academia and the Public: Recent Developments the World Over. Eds. Ann-Kathrin Hoffmann & Marc Fabian Buck. Routledge Press. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003437727
This chapter looks at the adaptation of Waldorf education to fit the local context of Kenya and how local teachers adopt Waldorf education to fit the needs of their learners. Based on 22 semi- structured interviews with East African Waldorf teachers, all of whom were trained in Kenya and the majority of whom work with them, we see that Waldorf education is presented as a way to return to pre-colonial education and as a way to preserve local culture. We argue that in the Kenyan context, despite the European roots of Waldorf education, it is positioned and often appeals to Kenyan teachers as an alternative to the standard (post)colonial western schooling as it draws on ideas that are similar to “traditional” indigenous educational traditions. Although Waldorf pedagogy comes from abroad and is taught by trainers coming from Germany and South Africa, local Waldorf teachers distinguish themselves from mainstream state pedagogy that is standardized, competitive and western and focus on the similarities of Waldorf and ‘traditional’ ways of knowing. At the same time, teachers are concerned with the totality of Anthroposophy encompassing all aspects of life, including the spiritual development of teachers. As a result, many teachers distance themselves from this movement.

Kagan, M. and Wenske-Stern, R. (2019): “Work of educational NGOs in Africa from a critical perspective: the case of teacher training in Burundi”. In International Development in Africa: Between Theory and Practice, Eds. Gez Y. N., R. Barak and M. Kagan, Pardes Pub.; [in Hebrew]
This article comes to examine how the principles of critical pedagogy can be used as significant tools for understanding and proposing solutions to the problems encountered by non-profit associations operating in the field of education in Africa. This idea was born from the fieldwork of Mania Kaganeva Makamba (Makamba) in Burundi in 2014, which examined the work of an Israeli association in the field of teacher training. From this research, the hypothesis emerged that educational concepts taken for granted influence the ways of operation of foreign associations operating in the field of education, and as a result, a clear theoretical understanding of the function and roles of these associations is lacking. These thoughts were formulated in this article in collaboration with Ruth Vanska, who worked in Teso in Uganda between 1999-2001 in the Norwegian organization Normisjon in programs for guiding adults in villages. The overwhelming feeling among the Norwegian volunteers was that the success of the program was concentrated precisely in the informal dimensions of creating friendships and changing the worldview of the volunteers themselves, while the understood goals of the program were not clear and therefore were not applicable either. These feelings received a coherent facet from the encounter with critical pedagogy, and our purpose here is to give words and explore the reasons and possibilities for change of the structural barriers underlying these feelings, which are shared by many volunteers returning from field work in African countries. To this end, interviews were conducted with a number of volunteers who worked in Israeli and Jewish organizations dealing with education in Ghana, Kenya and Ethiopia in order to examine whether there are common lines between our impressions and the experiences of other volunteers. Our central research question, then, is how educational concepts from the global north are reflected in the ways of working of associations in the field of education in Africa, and further to how critical pedagogy can provide tools for identifying these educational concepts and dealing with them.

Editorship of collective volumes and issues:

Kagan, M. and C. Cutright (Eds.) (2024): “Building Blocks of Knowledge: Investigating education, learning, and Knowing in Children and Youth”. NEOS Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group Publication. 16(1) https://acyig.americananthro.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/NEOS-Spring24-Kagan-Cutright.pdf
In this issue, we present interdisciplinary perspectives on youth and education, including scholars of anthropology, education, childhood studies, and international studies. With these diverse perspectives, we aim to bridge some of the apparent disciplinary divides involving education and the anthropology of children and youth. Education research often centers on the processes of pedagogy and learning, emphasizing the roles of teachers and learners within designated educational spaces, like schools, while anthropology and childhood studies have focused extensively on how children behave and engage with culture and community, often exploring the experiences of children within educational environments. While the issues at the center of these disciplines are often similar, they are engaged in unique ways, making it hard to create dialogue between them. In the last few decades, there has been a growing movement towards bridging disciplinary boundaries and adopting more active, engaged, and equitable research approaches. This has included expanding research beyond formal settings to encompass informal learning, employing diverse methodologies, and drawing from a range of disciplines (Henze 2020). This issue strives to participate in this shift and transcend the conventional confines of what education means. Central to this is a departure from traditional notions of education, particularly the hierarchical "banking" model famously critiqued by Freire (1970), which positions adults as active subjects and sole purveyors of knowledge and children as passive, listening recipients. We invited anthropologists and scholars of other disciplines to interpret education not only as a process in which formal knowledge is transferred from an adult to a child but also as a process that moves in other directions and includes social, cultural, and emotional ways of knowing that is transferred between children and their environments.

Gez, Y. N., Barak-Weekes, R., Kagan, M. (Eds.) (2019): International Development in Africa: Between Theory and Practice, “Now Africa” Series, Pardes Publications: Israel [in Hebrew] https://www.pardes.co.il/?id=showbook&catnum=978-1-61838-534-5
How will we create a world in which each person has access to clean water and basic infrastructure? How will we ensure that every woman can utilize her potential, learn and work in the field she is interested in? How will we ensure that every global community has the chance to thrive? And how will we ensure that we improve the life quality of all disadvantaged communities maintain the sacredness of life and nature and have a sustainable future for humanity and all living beings? The field of international development strives to improve the quality of life of disadvantaged populations around the world, and in particular on the African continent. In the last decades, much progress has been made in the theoretical understanding of the field and in building interventions adapted to the needs of different populations. However, the world of development is far from one piece, and in fact it is multi-faceted, controversies, and sometimes even failures. Fundamental questions regarding the effectiveness of international development channels, their existence, and the fact that they are a so-called reproduction of patterns of exploitation and colonial thinking, which have been accepted in the world for many years and have even led to post-development approaches, have had almost no echo in Hebrew writing until now. The book in front of you outlines a pioneering path of expanding knowledge and discussion in Israel and the Hebrew language. Its fourteen chapters take the reader through the length and breadth of the African continent. The authors - academics and people in the field - share their rich experience with us, and invite us to draw inspiration from success stories and draw conclusions from failed initiatives.
By combining theoretical dimensions with a selection of case studies from across the continent, the book seeks to highlight the great complexity of the development field, which is reflected in structural problems, multi-faceted power relations, cultural differences and a constant tension between law and practice. This book opens a window into the world of development with the intention of increasing awareness of the importance of the field, its promises and the challenges inherent in it, and placing it at the forefront of the public debate in Israel. The book accompanies the reader from the introductory encounter with the world of development to formulating a complex critique of the accepted ways of thinking and practices in the field.

Media piece(s):

Opinion | The Right of Children in Israel to go to School is Beyond Right and Left by Manya, Israel (2019)
In this Op-Ed published at Yala Press, I focus on the rights of children of African asylum seekers. In today’s Israeli reality, nationalism has become incompatible with child rights. Israel is a country ridden with conflicts and divisions between different groups, but what I feel is the most painful and problematic social-political rift is that between the ‘liberal’ left and the ‘conservative’ right. Each of these sides has picked a set of values that cannot be shared with the other side. Patriotism, nationalism, security and Jewish values are considered to be the property of the right, whilst human (and child) rights, minority rights and the environment have been relinquished to the left of the Israeli political map. The division has narrowed our view of the reality around us, as most problems cannot be divided into such a clean-cut way into two value columns. This is very clear in the case of children of migrant workers and asylum seekers in Israel who are caught in the crossfire between both sides and suffer because of it.