How to distotalize a refugee camp? Please let the school propagating

My research is inspired by the interactionist literacy and Erving Goffman’s position about total institutions. I conduct a field study for three years to show how a school is able to distotalize a refugee camp. I went to the following camps or accommodation sites to conduct analytic observations and semi-directive interviews: Calais (France); Gevgelija (Former Yougoslavian Republic Of Macedonia); Banja Koviljaca (Serbia); Skaramangas / Eleonas / Kara Tepe / Vial (Greece); Capo d’Orlando (Italy). The population I target is classified into three networks: Migrants; Education staff; Politics. I registered 63 discussions.

My hypothesis is particularly true in the camps without any administration like Calais or just a few services like Greek hotspots. More you try to invisibilize the migrants more you empower the school of the camp.

Outsiders according to the meaning given by Howard Becker, children are maintained far from school by public authorities and it entails a reminiscence of non-formal education. A project officer from the Greek Ministry of Education told me that in a refugee camp “School is contagious.” But I needed to understand when this mechanism appears because I also heard about vandalism on school containers or stolen computers stories. What I discovered is that the key element to transform the school in a safe place, attract parents and start to propagate the well-being is transculturality.
With children from different countries in the same classroom the balance depends on cooperation between each other. Teachers got a crucial role to manage it particularly through language instruction, life skills courses and trauma remediation. One of the most important difficulty for them is a scale conflict between being kind and being demanding. Indeed, you have to transform the school into a safe place, but you also need to provide a framework.

After achieving transculturality school becomes the central institution of the camp by becoming the secured place for children and their parents, providing social services, psychological support. Due to this position school is interacting with all the other institutions of the camp and moreover some interactions are established through the school. For example, in Gevgelija refugee camp a dispensary organizes seminaries in the school to appease Muslim mothers about the nurses’ practices. If the same meeting happens directly in the dispensary nobody would come. This interaction game leaded by the school object is the relevant one to explain the distotalization of a camp and the capacity for its inhabitants to rethink by themselves.