Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the role of conceptions of childhood in humanitarian provision of education and its construction as protection in and after conflict, particularly as a future-oriented project of social (re)production.

Paper long abstract:

The figure of the child has historically strong resonance in humanitarianism and other social responses to disaster and conflict. This manifests in the politics of humanitarian representation, perceptions of innocence and hierarchies of need, and in practice and discourse of protection, in which the figure of the child has particular moral and affective power. This is grounded in particular historical and western imaginings of childhood, but inform child protection approaches in diverse social and political contexts. In the last two decades, the humanitarian sector has seen formal incorporation of education as emergency relief, which draws on child protection and right to education frameworks, and situates formal primary and secondary schooling as part of humanitarian child protection activities.

This paper analyzes the humanitarian education project through the lens of childhood and potential futures, and asks how particular forms of childhood are conceptualized as in need of protection in conflict and displacement and the perceived role of education as providing that protection. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with humanitarian professionals, text and image representation, and reflexive engagement with previous work experience in the development and humanitarian sectors on education and protection, I illustrate ways humanitarian education projects engage, or not, with local politics of childhood and education, in dialogue with normative instruments and policies, as well as professionals’ own experiences and values of education. In focusing particularly on the politics of childhood, I suggest that education as protection seeks to (re)produce certain patterns of social relations, and pathologizes others.