‘The generation that will inherit Syria’: education as citizen aid and political opportunity

Abstract

Grassroots initiatives to provide education were an integral part of efforts to stem the humanitarian disaster unleashed by the armed conflict in Syria. This article studies activists who organised informal schooling for children amid the devastating war. Building on life story interviews, we highlight the versatility of initiatives in the field of education for citizens who simultaneously engage in humanitarian action and mobilise for political change. There is a natural concern to detach humanitarian work from politics in order to gain and maintain a space for action. This has distanced the study of humanitarian aid from social movements research, which focuses on long-term struggles over power and political structures. We maintain, however, that the social movement literature generally, and studies on structural and cognitive political opportunity specifically, can help refine our understanding of the illusive nature of citizen aid. Our findings indicate that Syrians involved in humanitarian educational activities constructed their own structure of opportunities by monitoring shifting political and humanitarian conditions. Opening schools was a technical and pragmatic solution to the educational disaster caused by war. At the same time, it was motivated by a long-lasting desire to free Syria from its political plight and to offer an alternative.

Keywords:

• Humanitarian aid
• social movement
• education in emergencies
• political opportunity
• resistance
• Syria
• war

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Cindy Horst, Marte Nilsen and Ebba Tellander for their valuable comments on an early draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Prior to the interviews, the participants were informed about the aims, methods and implications of the research, as well as the voluntary nature of participation, and gave oral consent. Subsequently, their consent was confirmed in written form over WhatsApp.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Research Council of Norway (grant number 261718).

Notes on contributors

Kjetil Selvik

Kjetil Selvik is Research Professor in the Research Group on Peace, Conflict and Development at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. He specialises in the comparative politics of the Middle East and has long experience in empirical research in the region. His research focuses on the ruling strategies of authoritarian regimes and the contestation they face in society. He has approached the interaction between state and opposition from a variety of perspectives, including the role of economic elites, religious actors, the media, and education. His latest book, co-authored with Jacob Høigilt, is Journalism in the Grey Zone: Pluralism and Media Capture in Lebanon and Tunisia (Edinburgh University Press, 2023). His articles have featured in journals such as Comparative Education Review, Comparative Sociology, Democratization, The International Journal of Middle East Studies, The International Journal of Press/Politics, Journalism Studies and World Development.

Tamar Groves

Tamar Groves is Associate Professor in the Department of Education Sciences, and Associate Dean for International Relations of the Teacher Training College at Extremadura University, Spain. She specialises in the history of educational innovation, social and political mobilisation and international education. She is the author of Teachers and the Struggle for Democracy in Spain (2014). She has co-authored books on the history of educational innovation (Aracne, 2018) and citizenship and social movements (Palgrave, 2017), and co-edited books such as Performing Citizenship: Social Movements Across the Globe (Routledge, 2015) and Women and Knowledge (Aracne, 2018). In addition, she has published in leading international journals such as European Journal of Higher Education, Journal of Social History, European History Quarterly, Paedagogica Historica, International Journal of the History of Education, War and Society and History of Education.