James, Boris

Syria’s Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan schools. Between political competition, nation-building and pedagogic adjustments - 2023.


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Since 2012, hundreds of thousands of Syrian Kurds settled in Iraqi Kurdistan Autonomous Region (IKR). Some did so in camps that are managed by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) jointly with NGOs and international organizations. Starting from 2014, the children attended curricula set by the KRG and taught in arabic by Syrian teachers, refugees themselves. This moving educational situation is underlied by dynamics that gather the process of building an education system within the IKR and the multifaceted social and political configuration of Syria’s Kurds refugees. From a fieldwork conducted between 2015 and 2019 within three camps in Erbil province (Kawargosk, Qushtepe, Darashakran), we aim to account this situation born of the crisis. These conditions question the very concepts of kurdishness, syrianness, iraqiness, through the diversity of pedagogic choices directed to the refugees. Beyond the adhesion to kurdish patriotic ideas, the concrete issue of an adequate school system for Syria’s Kurds within IRK reveals profound political if not ideological dissensions.