My forthcoming book, “Schooling Experiences of Refugee Children in Kampala, Uganda:

Rethinking Integration Discourse” is under contract with Routledge Press

Migration and Education Series.

The book focuses on the education of refugee children in primary schools in Kampala, Uganda. Using ethnographic data collected between 2020-2024, this book offers a sociological analysis into the different contextual aspects that shape the lived experiences of refugee children, parents, and their schools. There are three themes that form the central axis for this book and are used to unpack the complexities inherent in the notion of educational integration in such context: (1) access to educational opportunities and social mobility within Kampala and the role of urban space, socio-economic class and ethnicity play in educational mobility; (2) local values and pedagogical practices and how they influence children’s sense of belonging in the classroom; (3) how refugee children are affected by domestic and international policies, aid and legal categories, including movements towards self-reliance of refugees, eligibility for resettlement, and laws regarding separated and unaccompanied refugee minors. The book contributes to migration discourse, by challenging western dominant perspectives in the research of refugee education. The combination of in-depth ethnography in the unique context of Kampala, Uganda and the focus on both pedagogy and policy would make the book particularly appealing not only to refugee and education scholars but also to people interested in development, schooling in the global south, and social and educational policies. The case of Uganda challenges current refugee and educational theoretical frameworks and the dominance of the integration discourse. While the focus of the book is Uganda, it is used as a case study from which we can draw broader conclusions that apply to other contexts in the Global Urban South and Sub-Saharan Africa in particular.

Synopsis:
Based on extensive qualitative fieldwork in Kampala Uganda, this book offers a sociological analysis of the schooling experiences of refugee children, and the structure of the book reflects the different aspects of the diverged nature of being a refugee child in a context, different from studies conducted in the Global North. While the book is partially based on dissertation fieldwork conducted in 2019-2021, three of the substantive chapters are based on field visits between 2022-2024 (after Covid-19 and the reopening of schools in Uganda. Some of the data was co-collected with other researchers, but the chapters were written independently.
The first part of the book provides a broad overview on refugee children’s education and locates the case study within the field of migration and education studies. Guiding the reader through the study design and providing a detailed account of the data collection and analysis – the book goes on to place refugee children on Kampala’s map – identifying where they are situated within the local networks, and which educational and urban spaces they can access. The book then dive into what happens within the schools themselves, looking at both the classroom praxis and values instilled in the pupils – raising questions about the relevancy of western-driven conceptualizations of integration, belonging, and otherness for the Ugandan classroom context.
The main bulk of this book (chapter 5 – 9) looks at different refugee-related policies and categories and how these shape the lives of refugees – self-reliance policy, refugee aid, fostering policy, and resettlement. These chapters consider the ways in which policies shape schools’ acceptance of refugees, dynamics between refugees and host communities, meaning attached to the label refugee, and the influence of family-based policies and resettlement policies on refugees’ investments in local integration and education. These substantive chapters, weave together different types of data to exemplify the effect of international and national policy on the everyday lives of refugee families. In the final chapter, I discuss the broader implications of global trends in refugee policy and how it relates to the everyday lives of refugee families and what implications these may have on their schooling experiences. I summarize the implications of this study for understanding refugee education in Global South urban contexts and speak briefly about the possible futures of refugee children and refugee education in Uganda.