Education for Durable Solutions? Histories of Schooling in Kenya's Dadaab and Kakuma Refugee Camps

This account explains continuities in the challenges of providing access to quality education for refugees trapped in protracted situations (PRS) despite several shifts and changes in education policies and programming between 1992 and 2012. Through UNHCR archival documents and interviews with refugees as well as policymakers and program officers with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and its implementing partners, I reconstruct the contemporary education histories of Kenya’s Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps. I then comparatively analyze these narratives for critical junctures to determine how and why changes occurred to refugee education and on what unit level. Finally, I collectively consider these junctures for what they reveal about the conditions under which changes to refugee education occurred in the past and how UNHCR officers and refugees might occasion lasting changes to the challenges of refugee education in the future.