Due to the protracted nature of forced displacement, a majority of refugees spend their entire academic cycles in exile (Milner & Loescher, 2011). While some successfully navigate their educational trajectories, others are unable to complete basic education. Despite the important role education plays in emergency, displacement, and resettlement, refugee education remains under-researched. There is a dearth of research that has investigated what factor(s) at individual, family, and school levels contribute to children and youth’s school persistence and dropout amidst displacement. This study aimed to fill this substantial gap in the literature by taking a balanced, comprehensive approach to investigate the experiences of children and youth in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. Using a sequential mixed-methods design, this study examined the different factors that influenced the schooling of children and youth in Kakuma Refugee Camp. This study found that family poverty, inability to afford school uniforms and supplies, school uniform policy, living without parents/guardians, and family responsibilities were some of the major reasons that contributed to school dropout. By contrast, different types of support—financial, emotional, or academic—received from family members, teachers, and peers mainly influenced students’ persistence, despite persistent barriers in schooling. This study finds that ensuring educational access and persistence was not the role of a single stakeholder in education—i.e., a family member (parent), a head teacher, a teacher, or a student. Instead, different actors in children and youth’s sociocultural environments could play a role in influencing their decisions to (dis)continue education. The findings from this study not only contribute to expanding the knowledge base of education in emergencies, but they also support educators and practitioners who are providing and improving education for displaced populations, as well as policymakers within the Ministry of Education working to strengthen education systems and to foster access to quality education. My research findings may also prove meaningful in understanding the school persistence of school-aged children and youth in other refugee-hosting countries around the world, including the United States, and other mobile and marginalized populations in non-conflict settings.

La violence chronique qui caractérise la Somalie depuis plus de deux décennies a forcé près de deux millions de personnes à fuir. Cette ethnographie étudie l’expérience de l’asile prolongé de jeunes Somaliens qui ont grandi au camp de Kakuma, au Kenya. Leur expérience est hors du commun, bien qu’un nombre croissant de réfugiés passent de longues années dans des camps pourtant conçus comme temporaires, en vertu de la durée des conflits et de la normalisation de pratiques de mise à l’écart de populations « indésirables ». Nous explorons la perception qu’ont ces jeunes de leur environnement et de quelle façon leur exil structure leur perception du passé et de leur pays d’origine, et de leur futur. Ce faisant, nous considérons à la fois les spécificités du contexte et l’environnement global, afin de comprendre comment l’expérience des gens est façonnée par (et façonne) les dynamiques sociales, politiques, économiques et historiques. Nous observons que le camp est, et demeure, un espace de confinement, indépendamment de sa durée d’existence ; bien que conçu comme un lieu de gestion rationnelle des populations, le camp devient un monde social où se développent de nouvelles pratiques ; les jeunes Somaliens font preuve d’agentivité et interprètent leur expérience de manière à rendre leur quotidien acceptable ; ces derniers expriment une frustration croissante lorsque leurs études sont terminées et qu’ils peinent à s’établir en tant qu’adultes, ce qui exacerbe leur désir de quitter le camp. En effet, même s’il existe depuis plus de 20 ans, le camp demeure un lieu de transition. L’expérience de jeunes Somaliens qui ont grandi dans un camp de réfugiés n’a pas été étudiée auparavant. Nous soutenons que cette expérience est caractérisée par des tensions entre contraintes et opportunités, mobilité et immobilité, isolation et connexion ou victimisation et affirmation du sujet – et des temporalités contradictoires. Cette étude souligne que des notions comme la convivialité ou la pluralité des appartenances développées dans la littérature sur la cohabitation interethnique dans les villes ou sur l’identité des migrants aident à appréhender le réalité du camp. Cette ethnographie montre également que, loin d’être des victimes passives, les réfugiés contribuent à trouver des solutions à leur exil. / Chronic violence has characterized Somalia for over two decades, forcing nearly two million people to flee. This ethnography studies the experience of protracted exile of Somalis who were raised in Kakuma refugee camp, in Kenya, and are now young adults. Their experience is relatively uncommon, although increasing numbers of people spend long periods in camps conceived as temporary, due to the length of conflicts and the normalization of excluding populations deemed undesirable. I explore how young people perceive their living environment and how growing up in exile structures their view of the past and their country of origin, and the future and its possibilities. In doing so, I regularly shift perspectives from the specificities of the context to the global environment, to understand how people’s experience is shaped by (and shapes) the social, political, economical and historical dynamics in which it is embedded. My observations can be summarized into a few broad statements: regardless of how long it has existed, the camp is and remains a space of containment; conceived as a rationally organized space to manage populations, the camp becomes a messier social world where new practices develop; young Somalis display agency and interpret their experience in a way that makes the present bearable; frustration grows when Somali youth complete their education and struggle to establish themselves as adults, catalyzing their determination to leave Kakuma. Indeed, although refugees have been living there since the early 1990s, the camp remains a space of transition. Although there have been a number of studies on refugee camps in Kenya, no study has focused on the experience of Somali youth raised in a refugee camp. I argue that this experience is traversed and shaped by tensions between constraints and opportunities, mobility and immobility, isolation and connectedness, victimization and affirmation of the subject, citizenship and refugeeness – and by conflicting temporalities. This ethnographic study highlights the fact that notions such as conviviality or the multiplicity of people’s belongings developed in the literature on interethnic cohabitation in cities or the ethnic identity of migrants, help us to understand the camp experience. This research also shows that, far from being powerless victims, people actively contribute to finding solutions to their exile.