Conference Agenda

In recent years, the world has seen an escalation in war situations and an increase in the number of disasters. In war situations, the risks that affect the educational process are even greater. Children need to be moved from one place to another, to a safer place. Sometimes it is difficult to know where the next stop should be and for how long. Where and how should education be organised in these situations of uncertain reality?

As by November 2023, according to UNICEF “400 million children – or about 1 child in every 5 – are living in or fleeing from conflict zones. They are losing family members and friends. And some are being recruited and used by armed forces or groups. Many of them have been displaced multiple times, risking separation from their families, losing critical years of education, and fraying ties to their communities”[1]. Even children grow up and become adults in this insecure reality, and it is not possible to know how long the insecurity will last and what the conditions and capacities for education will be.

When we look at the range of cases from different conflict countries, we see how non-specifically organised educational spaces are in an intermediate state of uncertainty. These cases are sometimes unique and unexpected, but they are important for overcoming the challenges of educational processes in uncertainty. There is no country and no educational system that is safe from risky situations and long-term uncertainties. "We have to learn to deal with uncertainty... to calculate with uncertainty...”[2]

War and conflict create unique levels of insecurity. How these shape educational settings and pedagogical situations is not yet well understood. Theoretical tools, conceptual understandings and analytical approaches are not defined at a scientific and academic level. It is not possible to formulate conflict-related uncertainties and bring them to the classroom, for example. There is still a lack of constructed knowledge about post-war reconstruction or conflict prevention, the role of time in understanding conflict or war, education in uncertainty related to political crisis, etc.

This systematic analysis aims to understand the complex interplay of factors related to the pedagogical processes, identifying schooling within uncertainties in war and conflicts.

The specific objective is to suggest a specific framework to understand uncertainty in education research on situations of simmering and hidden conflicts.

The analysis will seek to explore the following key research questions

A) What are the theoretical views, understandings, formulations of uncertainty in educational research on situations of simmering and hidden conflicts?

B) What models of education are used in emergencies, conflicts and wars?

C) How should systematic analysis of schooling in uncertainty and pedagogy of uncertainty in war situations be constructed? What should be the scientific dimension of schooling in uncertainties?

However, there is no scientifically defined approach to uncertainty and schooling in uncertainty, especially in situations of war and conflict. In the current educational discourse, there are no models of education that can be used to navigate pedagogical challenges in situations of uncertainty.

Current educational research has identified different approaches to education in conflict countries and risks to education in war situations. It is possible to understand - how war affects children and their development [3], what type of risks and crises face education during the war [4], [5]. Therefore, as we can see educational researchers need to highlight the problems that cannot be solved by the rules and standards and that are outside the normal educational processes. The researches from the countries with armed conflicts show that the central importance is given to the security and the priority needs[6].

Asylum-seeking and refugee children are considered vulnerable because of their developmental immaturity and physical disability (Djampour, 2018). In the cases of unaccompanied minors, it is exacerbated by their lack of parental care (Eide, 2020; Engebrigtsen, 2020). The problematic nature of the flight from wars, hunger, and oppression, compounded with a possible susceptibility and actual exposure to other people’s abuse, violence, or other use of force, complicates their vulnerability and our understanding of fragility. On arrival in host nations, the definition of vulnerability that warrants who can be included is narrowly defined and re-defined, depending on what categories of migrants are given priority (Kalisha, 2023), for example, depending on which country is most ravaged by war. In Norwegian policy frameworks, education is offered as a right for all as long as the child is guaranteed to stay at least for 3 months.

However, asylum-seeking children do not have the same rights since many enter the country already at an age beyond the primary education deemed free for all, that is, upper secondary school. Additionally, there exist varied school experiences among the asylum-seekers, some being illiterate while others have completed high school. As such, placement connected to age becomes problematic as many 15-18-year-olds are placed in high schools without any prior experience in Norway- (Kalisha & Saevi, 2020; Kalisha & Sævi, 2021). The lack of clear structures on who is responsible for their education makes it difficult to acquire placement in the first place. Educating them is left to volunteers’ and county governors’ discretion. This means their right to education does not depend on their inherent vulnerability. Arguably, vulnerability, especially one linked to trauma, cannot be diagnosed while still in the asylum-seeking phase. Is it possible to still think of vulnerability as an inevitable human condition that remains a challenge to education and not a problem to be solved? Given that rights have to be enforced by the nation-state and that unaccompanied minors are yet to be part of the nation, the United Nations Higher Commissioner for Refugees cannot enforce the said right to education until one is categorized as a refugee. The right to education and other rights due to asylum seekers tend to be suspended, and they receive the bare minimum while waiting for asylum. What would be the purpose of educating them?

In this paper, I look at vulnerability as a pedagogical challenge that does not need to be problematized, especially for children in forced migration. Instead, their vulnerability should be seen as something we constantly work with within education. Thinking of vulnerability this way juxtaposes it against rights due to them as human beings. Yet the young asylum-seekers, mainly from non-western countries, find themselves in an in-between position, a liminal and a gray area regarding their rights, especially when they keep changing in law. I question the positioning of vulnerability as a reason to grant residency while at the same time trivializing their other rights, like the right to education.