Content area
Abstract
This thesis examines the impact of refugee camp education and repatriation policy on a rural Dinka community in South Sudan and what implications can be drawn from this impact to inform the larger national and international projects of education in emergencies and conflict-affected settings. The author draws from the history of colonial and post colonial education projects among the Dinka and of refugee education and encampment to inform a critical analysis of the form and function of internationally-led education in emergency settings, and the role of formal schooling and the educated person in contemporary Dinka society. The narratives of children who fled the civil war in Sudan, accessed education in the Kakuma Refugee Camp, and returned to their communities as educated young adults are described and measured against the expectations of the international institutions who provided this education as well as the families who rely on these educated returnees to revive a vulnerable pastoralist enterprise. Using critical neo-institutionalist and anthropological theories, the author argues that the multiplex of refugee education and post-conflict reconstruction policies both converge and diverge from each other as well as from the communities they attempt to serve, often frustrating the state-building projects of international actors. Because communities like the Dinka who have historically been marginalized from access to formal schooling are mistakenly seen by international humanitarian aid institutions as peoples without an education history, the author also argues that education policy in emergencies and conflict-affected settings are too often divorced from the realities of life and schooling during and after crisis.
