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Paper short abstract:

This contribution. based on ethnographic research in a Congolese refugee camp, explores how school participates in the production of meaning about armed conflict beyond peace education as a distinct teaching subject.

Paper long abstract:

In the past two decades, the delivery of education in refugee camps has been critically examined in terms of the relationship between education and conflict. In this paper we argue for the analytical productiveness of decentering analysis beyond peace education as a distinct teaching subject. We suggest that in order to understand the role of school in teaching peace it is useful to take into account the broader social and institutional context and the diversity of actors implicated in schooling (teachers, family, State, NGOs. students).

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Congolese refugee camp focusing on the local governance of schools and everyday interactions inside and outside of classrooms, our contribution seeks to situate teaching about conflict and peace — and the lack thereof — within broader processes of physical and symbolic boundary-making between school and the "outside" world. How is school constructed, in the context of a refugee camp, as a utopian space holding the promise of peace? What kinds of boundaries are drawn, in constant interaction with the social and institutional landscape, between what is supposed to be inside and outside? And what meanings do teachers and students ascribe to school's silence about conflict and peace?

We aim to explore how school participates in the production of meaning about armed conflict in a context where there is hardly any explicit teaching about the recent history of the Congo and about peace. This raises the question as to the other, more subtle ways in which conflict is problematized and re-worked at school.