Syrian Refugee Children in the Middle East and Europe

Integrating the Young and Exiled

Michelle Pace, Somdeep Sen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780815347347
• eBook ISBN: 9781351169301
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Since the start of the conflict in Syria in 2011, Syrian refugee children have withstood violence, uncertainty, fear, trauma and loss. This book follows their journeys by bringing together scholars and practitioners to reflect on how to make their situation better and to get this knowledge to as many front liners - across European and neighbouring countries in the Middle East - as possible.

The book is premised on the underlying conception of refugee children as not merely a vulnerable contingent of the displaced Syrian population, but one that possesses a certain agency for change and progress. In this vein, the various contributions aim to not just de-securitize the 'conversation' on migration that frequently centres on the presumed insecurity that refugees personify. They also de-securitize the figure and image of the refugee. Through the stories of the youngest and most vulnerable, they demonstrate that refugee children are not mere opaque figures on who we project our insecurities. Instead, they embody potentials and opportunities for progress that we need to nurture, as young refugees find themselves compelled to both negotiate the practical realities of a life in exile, and situate themselves in changing and unfamiliar sociocultural contexts. Drawing on extensive field research, this edited volume points in the direction of a new rights based framework which will safeguard the future of these children and their well-being.

Offering a comparative lens between approaches to tackling refugees in the Middle East and Europe, this book will appeal to students and scholars of refugees and migration studies, human rights, as well as anyone with an interest in the Middle East or Europe.

1 The young and exiled

An introduction

Somdeep Sen and Michelle Pace

A United Nations Refugee Agency report titled “The Future of Syria” declared that with two million Syrian children forced into exile because of the persistent conflict it was now the ‘time to act’ and therefore demanded action beyond headlines. Its foreword thus concluded: “The world must act to save a generation of traumatized, isolated and suffering Syrian children from catastrophe. If we do not move quickly, this generation of innocents will become lasting casualties of an appalling war” (UNHCR 2013). Such a statement has found ritual credence in the images of refugees braving (and perishing in) the tumultuous waters of the Mediterranean in search for a safe haven. The possible abduction of 10.000 unaccompanied refugee children kidnapped by organized trafficking syndicates (Townsend 2016) confirmed the reality that children are indeed the most vulnerable when in exile (UNHCR 1994).

However, focusing on the vulnerabilities of refugee children can obfuscate the reality that minors are also future agents of progress and reform. That is to say, there is a need to conceive children as not in transition to adulthood but a unit in and of itself; an independent state of being and “structural form” that refugee children inhabit and negotiate (James, Prout & Jenks 1998: 7). It was indeed this lack of ‘agency’ being accorded to children that also inspired Grannis (2011) to put the voices of children rendered vulnerable by the scourge of HIV/Aids in Sub-Saharan Africa at the forefront. To be sure, despite embodying some inherent agency, refugee children risk becoming isolated and insecure while in exile. And being in such a state of crisis consequently encourages many to argue that refugee children are just vulnerable and, in a state of exile, remain “incapable of change” (Nieuwenhuys 2013: 5).

In this edited volume, we define refugee children as children less than 18 years of age who are outside their country of origin, Syria in our case, and who are unaccompanied refugee children if they have been separated from both parents or previous legal customary caregivers. Accompanied refugee children are those who are accompanied by either both or at least one parent or a legal customary caregiver in their host society. Our discussions in this volume are of course premised on the reality that the young in exile find themselves in a state of exceptional suffering – one that necessitates urgent academic and policy responses. That said, it further broadens this deliberation by arguing that the ‘story’ of refugee children is not only one of their suffering but also one that displays the ability of the young to survive their state of exile, creatively navigate the same and make sense of their condition of suffering as refugees. It is in view of this conception of the life of the young in exile that this volume brings together contributions that engage in a nuanced dialogue on the trials of refugee children that account for their suffering while remaining committed to the notion of refugee children as imbued with inherent agency.

The authors in this edited volume include child protection specialists, researchers as well as civil society coordinators who have been working closely with refugee children who have fled Syria and came to either Turkey, Greece, Jordan, Lebanon, Sweden, the Netherlands or Denmark. Some of these children are living in the streets of Beirut, some have been granted asylum while others find themselves in “exit” centres because their asylum applications have been rejected. Needless to say, all contributors have been actively engaged with these children and endeavoured to produce reflexive knowledge. By this we mean that all contributors have involved refugee children in the production and reproduction of knowledge of which ultimately we hope they will be the main beneficiaries.

In view of the exceptional suffering faced by young Syrian refugees, some of the contributions ask: How is it that the young have been compelled to face such suffering? What happens when their most basic rights in life are suspended or taken away from them? What is it that leads to refugee children’s feeling of being in an in-between state, a liminal situation, after their displacement from their home?

Accordingly, Michelle Pace’s contribution focuses on the role of the EU–Turkey agreement in the exponential degradation of refugee children’s lives in exile. She argues that the agreement sees the European Union disregarding its moral obligations and normativity upon which it came into being following the devastation of the Second World War. Moreover, Pace posits, the agreement – mirroring similar pacts that are in the works with several (often human rights violating) states – suspends the rights of refugees in general and refugee children in particular in return for political gains. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Lebanon and Denmark, the author concludes that this agreement results in a condition of suffering for refugee children reminiscent of Agamben’s ‘state of exception’ (1998). Be it the European Union’s suspension of its commitment to the human rights of the exiled by way of the EU–Turkey agreement or the lack of a concerted and determined international response as a whole, they have ensured the suspension of refugees’ legal guarantees of human rights; this suspension of rights now being the new norm. That is to say, that which has been politically deemed as an exception – say, in view of the ‘security concerns’ that often surround any discourse on the ‘refugee crisis’ – has become the norm. The question then remains: How would one then characterize this ‘state of exception’ that young Syrian refugees find themselves condemned to?

In her chapter, Dogus Simsek discusses Syrian refugee children’s life in exile in Turkey in view of the Turkish government’s ‘integration’ policies. The author premises her contribution on a conception of integration as a two-way process (a position supported by all contributors in this volume) that requires not only that the ‘newcomer’ adapt to the norms of the host society but also that the host community ensures the refugee community has access to resources and rights and is not subjected to discrimination and exclusion. Accordingly, and based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Istanbul and border cities, including Gaziantep, Sanliurfa, Hatay, Kilis and Mardin, Simsek’s contribution argues that Syrian refugees’ ability to integrate is hindered by their limited access to education, employment and healthcare. With regards to Syrian refugee children, the author asserts that their ability to integrate is directly contingent on their access to education. As a result, Simsek argues, several barriers such as the lack of Turkish language skills and financial hardships affecting their access to education hamper Syrian refugee children’s ability to integrate. In this vein, the author concludes that the (lack of) access to education is synonymous with Syrian refugee children’s (lack of) integration in Turkish society as – in keeping with the notion of integration as a two-way process – the host society’s inability to secure the rights of the refugees leaves them unable to meaningfully integrate while in exile.

Continuing with the deliberation on the centrality of education in determining the ‘quality’ of refugee children’s life in exile the two subsequent chapters draw on important empirical insights from Lebanon. The contribution by Lana Khattab, Chiara Butti and Ilina Slavova draws on extensive fieldwork and explores the extent to which the current state of the education sector and educational opportunities in Lebanon promote social cohesion between host communities and Syrian refugees. It argues that educational opportunities in Lebanon that bring together children and adults of different nationalities and backgrounds in a structured and regular way support social cohesion more effectively than those that limit physical interaction. Moreover, the authors argue, non-formal education activities support social cohesion more effectively than the formal education system. The chapter by Bassel Akar and Erik van Ommering proposes a new framework for understanding refugee children’s education through the case of Syrian refugee children in Lebanon. Having summarized the dilemmas surrounding refugee children’s access to education, the authors argue that access to education is an insufficient ‘signpost’ for refugee children’s welfare in exile. Instead, access to education must be accompanied by holistic services that promote inclusion and support, investment in the professional development of teachers, the promotion of caregivers’ involvement in refugee children’s education, inclusive and accessible educational provisions and advocacy on legal and policy matters pertaining to education. It is when these five dimensions are included in the educational provisions accessible to refugee children that the education available to them becomes best suited to respond to their needs and capacities.

With the above chapters having characterized the trials of the lives of the young in exile, Josepha Ivanka Wessels’s chapter discusses the Syrian refugees’ state of being after displacement through the notion of liminality (Gennep 1909; Turner 1964). The author draws on field visits to internally displaced people’s (IDP) camps, satellite imagery and interviews with Syrians in Syria, Turkey and the Netherlands and maps out the situation of Syrian children in these IDP camps in comparison to the trajectories of Syrian refugee children in Europe. In view of this comparative perspective, Wessels argues that the extent and duration of refugee children’s state of liminality or of being suspended in a state of in-between-ness is determined by the locality to which they have been displaced as well as the extent to which they have mobility thereafter. The author concludes that while IDP camps provide a place of refuge that is relatively safe and familiar to its young residents they remain severely deprived of resources, including access to education, that refugee children require in order to transition out of their state of in-between-ness. Moreover, the continued violence in the vicinity of these camps ensures that refugee children remain under duress and are thus unable to ‘settle’ into their lives in exile. As a result, in comparison, Syrian refugee children in Europe who have their basic psychosocial and material needs fulfilled, Wessels concludes that children in IDP camps find their state of liminality, and thus their state of in-between-ness, to be far more permanent; a permanence that is bound to have a lasting, detrimental psychological impact.

Yet, as we have argued earlier, the story of refugee children relayed in this volume is not just concerned with their suffering. Instead, it also delves into the manner in which the exiled young navigate and find a semblance of meaningful-ness in their state of exception wherein their rights are permanently suspended. The subsequent contributions thus ask: How do refugee minors overcome the in-between state that they find themselves in and how do they become members of their host societies? Can children that have undergone such traumatic experiences build up a capacity to adapt and continue developing positively at multiple levels of their new environments in spite of the events and adverse situations that they have faced along the way? If so, how do they cultivate a capacity to develop? And, in view of the failed institutional and policy responses to the rights and protection of vulnerable children on the move, how should academia respond? If we argue that the exiled young are imbued with agency despite their condition of suffering, can this conception be mirrored in the academic endeavour responding to the refugee crisis?

These questions are tackled head-on by the ensuing contributors. In their chapter Michel Maragel and Sandra Manachi acknowledge the overwhelming odds that Syrian refugees face in exile. Yet, through their fieldwork in Lebanon, they emphasize a need to critically engage with refugee children’s capacity to be resilient when on the move. Drawing on a context specific understanding of resilience, the authors argue that Syrian refugee children face a multitude of stressors that impact (and are detrimental to) their mental health. To be sure, Maragel and Manachi demonstrate that these children remain capable of being resilient despite these stressors. Nonetheless, there is a need to develop policies of intervention that centre on further nurturing their ability to be resilient in exile. The authors therefore conclude that interventions need to incorporate protective factors such as secure living conditions, protection to caregivers and access to education as a means of developing a social ecology for refugee children that would bolster their inherent ability to be resilient to the stressors that characterize their life in exile.

Similarly, Lisa Maren Steller’s chapter on young Syrian refugees in Jordan also focuses on their ability to secure their rights in an environment where their rights have been suspended. Based on interviews conducted with young refugees and her observations of several refugee-led youth initiatives, Maren Steller demonstrates that young refugees indeed find themselves in an in-between state – unable to return to their place of origin, yet also excluded from their host communities. Echoing Hannah Arendt (1973), Maren Steller argues that these children have lost their ‘right to have rights’. Nonetheless, she also sustains that it would be misleading to view young refugees as entirely submissive to their in-between state. Through what the author describes as ‘acts of citizenship’ (Isin & Nielsen 2008) these young refugees pursue an education, develop professional competencies, initiate organizations, become employed and build a social network in their host society. The legal right to Jordanian citizenship and the inclusion it entails remains out of reach for Syrian refugees. Yet, Maren Steller demonstrates that young refugees are able to garner a de facto citizenship and membership in Jordanian society, which in turn allows them to transition beyond their in-between state and build a future in exile.

Somdeep Sen’s chapter then brings the volume’s notion of young refugees as imbued with agency into a discussion on the academic response to the refugee crisis. Surely, the author notes, many would argue that the extent of the crisis faced by Syrian refugee children compels academia to respond. But what would this academic response entail? Sen argues that activist research – presumably written ‘for’ the marginalized – tends to distinguish the academy from the field of activism whereby activism is termed as what follows the academic endeavour. But instead of treating academia as merely a tool for the activism that it precedes, the author posits that academic texts that purport to be in the interest of Syrian refugees need to be activist in their very endeavour from the start. Such a ‘brand’ activist research would of course need to conceptually and methodologically describe the crises that characterize the lives of the young in exile. Furthermore, it would also need to account for their agency, one that persists despite their condition of suffering. Conceptually, Sen argues, it would be insufficient to discuss say trauma or access to education – often used as markers of refugee children’s suffering in exile – without reflecting on the manner in which refugees find normalcy and meaningfulness in a condition of suffering. Similarly, in a discussion of the hegemonic norms of integration that young refugees encounter in their host society one would also need to discuss the ways in which refugees accept, reject, negotiate and circumvent the parameters of these norms. For Sen, an ethnographic approach is best suited to serve as an activist methodology as it allows the researcher access to the manner in which young refugees navigate their condition of suffering and thus exercise their agency. Moreover, methodological activism should also be evident in recognizing that refugee subjects play an active role in the knowledge that is garnered from the field. Part of the knowledge is gathered by researchers who enter (and leave) the field on their own accord. But part of the knowledge is also determined by the ‘subject’ of our academic inquiry who determines the extent and character of the field access.

We conclude that, be it with regards to the ‘brand’ of research that responds to the refugee crisis, refugee children’s access to education, their resilience or simply their ability to transition from the state of exception or in-between-ness, the focus throughout this volume (while not always explicit) is firmly embedded in the inherent agency of young refugees. It is in recognition of this ability to negotiate, navigate and find meaningfulness in a condition of utter suffering that the contributions in this volume discuss the experiences of Syrian refugee children in and of exile, the support they require and the kind of protection and education systems that are best suited to meet their needs. Through the course of these deliberations all the contributors consider refugee children to be active participants in the process of knowledge production. Accordingly, as most chapters in this volume draw on extensive field research, it is through the refugee children’s voices that its proposals point in the direction of a new rights based framework, which will safeguard the future and well-being of these children.

In this sense, Jennifer Skulte-Ouaiss, who authors a critically engaged postscript is right to point out that the contributions in this volume are not an exhaustive representation of the lives of refugee children in the Middle East and Europe. She reflects on how these contributions do not for instance critically engage with the pathologies of an authoritarian regime that have triggered the ‘refugee crisis’ and do not discuss how the crises faced by refugee children in exile reflect on the host communities themselves. Although these important contemplations were not intended to be included in this volume, they are very important for future work that builds on this volume. Our focus throughout the course of preparing this anthology has been the interests and needs of refugee children. In this sense, this volume truly aspires to be ‘for’ Syrian refugee children who now bear within themselves the future prospects of Syria – a future that, much like these children, has been dispersed into exile.

References

Agamben, G., 1998, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. D. Heller-Roazen, Stanford University Press, Stanford.

Arendt, H., 1973, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York.

Grannis, S. W., 2011, Hope Amidst Despair: HIV/AIDS-Affected Children in Sub-Saharan Africa, Pluto Press, London.

Isin, E. F. & Nielsen, G. M., 2008, Acts of Citizenship, Zed Books, New York.

James, A., Prout, A. & Jenks, C., 1998, Theorizing Childhood, Polity Press, Cambridge.

Nieuwenhuys, O., 2013, ‘Editorial: Theorizing Childhood(s): Why We Need Postcolonial Perspectives’, Childhood 21(2), 3–8.

Townsend, M., 2016, ‘10,000 Refugee Children Are Missing, Says Europol’, The Guardian, viewed 3 May 2017, from www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/30/fears-for-missing-child-refugees.

Turner, V., 1964, ‘Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage’, The Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society, Symposium on New Approaches to the Study of Religion, pp. 4–20.

UNHCR, 1994, ‘Refugee Children: Guidelines on Protection and Care’, viewed 3 May 2017, from www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3470.html.

UNHCR,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The young and exiled: an introduction
• 2 The EU–Turkey deal and the impact on refugee children
• 3 The processes of integration and education: the case of Syrian refugees and Syrian refugee children in Turkey
• 4 The resilience of Syrian refugee children in Lebanon
• 5 From a state of shock to agency in liminality: Syrians and their children on the move
• 6 An emerging framework for providing education to Syrian refugee children in Lebanon
• 7 The right to have rights of Syrian refugee youth: two stories about the possibilities of membership in exile
• 8 “They are from a country, and we are from another”: the intersection of education and social cohesion between Syrian refugees and their host community in Lebanon
• 9 Writing the ‘refugee crisis’: proposals for activist research
• 10 The young and exiled: a postscript
• Contributors
• Index