Schools and Refugee Children: The Case of Syrians in Turkey
| Published date | 01 April 2019 |
| Author | Çetin Çelik,Ahmet İçduygu |
| Date | 01 April 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12488 |
Schools and Refugee Children: The Case of
Syrians in Turkey
C
ßetin C
ßelik* and Ahmet _
Icßduygu*
ABSTRACT
Education is the most effective tool for migrant and refugee integration. When successfully
provided, it is particularly useful for eradicating the traces of trauma among refugee children,
offering means to social mobility and enhancing social and structural integration into society.
This article introduces schooling options for Syrian children in Turkey and deals with how
school types shape experiences of these students through the accounts of their parents with
attention to the notion of institutional habitus. Drawing on a comparative qualitative case study
of refugee children in Temporary Education Centres and Public Schools in Turkey, it specifi-
cally investigates how schools with their practices, organization, and regulations contribute to
or hinder the integration and adaptation of Syrian refugee children to school and society in
Turkey.
INTRODUCTION
The transformation of international migration regime from labour migration to irregular migration
from the 1990s onwards has converted traditional migrant-sending countries such as Turkey into
migrant-sending, migrant-receiving, and transit countries (Castles et al., 2014). Located en route to
traditional destination countries, these countries now seek to limit international migration towards
them while at the same time satisfying the immediate needs of immigrants concerning status,
health, housing, and education (Eder, 2015). In response to the increasing number of immigrants,
immigrant integration has become a burning issue in these societies (Erder, 2016). The pressure on
these countries is noteworthy, because they have little prior experience with immigrants and often
lack the institutional set-up for promoting integration (Yıldız and Uzg€
oren, 2016). Furthermore, the
rapid, massive, uncontrolled and irregular character of the recent migration poses challenges to the
conventional assimilation and integration theories (Alba and Foner, 2015) and complicates ways of
possible immigrant adaptation in these countries.
Recently, several studies –such as those by Cosßkun and Nur Emin (2015), Erdo
gan (2015), Bir-
can and Sunata (2015) –have advanced knowledge and discourse regarding Turkey’s integration
capacity of, mainly Syrian, refugees, by documenting the characteristics of irregular immigrants.
This article builds on this valuable, often descriptive, literature and enriches it by exploring how
existing educational institutions facilitate or hinder the adaptation of Syrian refugee children. Draw-
ing upon the notion of institutional habitus (Reay et al., 2001), this article documents the practices,
organization and regulations of two schooling options for Syrian refugee children, Temporary Edu-
cation Centre (TEC) and Public School (PS), and looks at how these shape their experiences in
terms of integration.
*KocßUniversity
doi: 10.1111/imig.12488
©2018 The Authors
International Migration ©2018 IOM
International Migration Vol. 57 (2) 2019
ISSN 0020-7985Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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