Many a Slip between Cup and Lip: Navigating Noncitizenship and School-to-Work Transitions in Kakuma Refugee Camp

Abstract

This article draws from curricular analysis and ethnographic methods in school and community spaces where young people live, learn, and work in Kenya’s Kakuma Refugee Camp. We describe how formal citizenship education intended for Kenyan citizens is mediated by teachers working in refugee-serving schools. Our analysis shows how these messages, often scarce and decontextualized, orient refugees to project an imagined future of stability, obscuring the skills needed to navigate the uncertainty they will encounter as noncitizens enduring protracted exile. Examining refugee youth transitions after completing their schooling, we document ‘slips’ in the gaps between the civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions promoted in schools and those required within a limited opportunity structure dominated by a relief economy. Beyond school, we examine pathways that young refugees charted through apprenticeships within the informal economy, leveraging their social networks, gaining life skills, and enacting civic commitments while honing more sustainable livelihoods in exile. We argue that education’s value cannot be contingent on belonging or citizenship status and suggest that the contextualized nature of practice-based learning entailed through apprenticeships enables young refugees to create community through everyday participation, where social relationships both facilitate civic learning and are an outcome of that learning.