‘Inclusive for whom?’: the experiences of Syrian refugee children with disabilities and their families in accessing education in Lebanon

Costantini, Giada ORCID: 0000-0001-7829-7594 (2025). ‘Inclusive for whom?’: the experiences of Syrian refugee children with disabilities and their families in accessing education in Lebanon. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This work is about the unexpected spaces of confinement reproduced by the ‘inclusive’ rhetoric in education within humanitarian contexts, where Syrian refugee children with disabilities come to be relegated. It responds to a critical void in the literature, theory, policy and practice concerning
education in humanitarian settings, particularly at the intersection of refugeehood and disability. While education for refugees and people with disabilities have been explored separately, there remains a significant gap in addressing the educational rights of refugee children with disabilities. The study originates from this underexplored intersection and contributes to the growing body of work aimed at bridging this gap. The research explores the lived experiences of Syrian refugee children with disabilities and their families in accessing education and other basic services in Lebanon. It also investigates how ‘inclusion’ is framed for education in humanitarian contexts, and the consequences of this framing of inclusion for Syrian refugee children with disabilities. Moreover, it analyzes the strategies participants have in place to respond to and to deal with the multiple challenges and crises they face daily.

It is an empirical qualitative research project that takes an interdisciplinary and multidimensional approach. Located within an interpretive/social constructionist paradigm, it employs Constructivist Grounded Theory as a data analysis tool (Charmaz, 2006). The data were collected between August and December 2022 and are constituted by semi-structured interviews with 11 Syrian refugee children and youth with different types and severity of disabilities, 25 Syrian families living in Lebanon, and 21 representatives of organizations of people with disabilities (OPDs), international and Lebanese non-governmental organizations, civil society organizations and UN agencies.

The findings reveal that humanitarian actors in the region often employ emergency discourses to justify their failure in implementing inclusive education programs and strategies, contributing to the de /prioritization and structural exclusion of people with disabilities. Inclusion within these efforts is operationalized according to cost-benefit assessments, whereby the level and nature of inclusion is defined according to people’s capacity to fit within neoliberal and ableist normative standard of productivity, efficiency, and ability. Children who best comply with these standards are prioritized for inclusion, while those with severe and complex disabilities are systematically excluded due to the perceived higher costs their inclusion would require. Syrian parents denounce the lack of education opportunities for children with severe and complex disabilities, stating that their children are ‘left to themselves’, prevented to exercise, and access their basic human rights, and ‘treated like if they do not exist’. It is in this instance that these children come to embody what Agamben calls bare life, a life which is stripped of all legal, political, and social rights, being circumscribed in a state of exception. Moreover, building on Syrian parents and their children with disabilities’ lived experiences, the study addresses different forms of agency and resistance within spatiality of exception, disrupting and challenging the broader Western dominant humanitarian narrative of vulnerability, passivity, and helplessness through which Syrian refugees come to be constructed and represented.

Through this work, I have expanded critical understanding of the co-opted notion of inclusive education in the Global South by introducing and developing the (C)GT’s core category of ‘Letting die through Neoliberal Inclusion’. In conceptualizing this notion, I argue that education in humanitarian contexts, through the reproduction of emergency discourses, which legitimize the advancement of neoliberal significations of inclusion, contributes to the construction of Syrian refugee children with disabilities, especially with severe and complex ones, as Homo Sacer, someone who can be killed, or in this case ‘let to die’, by anyone with impunity.

The study underlines the urgency to promote more interdisciplinary research and multi-stakeholders’ collaboration to critically re-think the ways in which humanitarian actors, and the broader society, define and operationalize inclusion. The recommendations drawn from this work emphasize the need to develop a shared conceptual foundation across different disciplines and actors working on education in humanitarian contexts to advance theory, policy and practice. It also advocates for translating research into accessible formats for non-academic stakeholders to advance critical conversations on the field, and to work more collaboratively with affected communities, OPDs and other partners. Other recommendations suggest the development of interdisciplinary training for humanitarian actors, educators and other stakeholders to strengthen capacity for inclusive education, and to enhance transparency in monitoring and evaluation practices to address the gaps identified in service provision.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):