Rohingya Refugees and Classroom Children: Cultivating a Lost Generation

Abstract

Globalization confronts localization most bluntly in Rohingya refugee camps. The Global Refugee Compact’s Education in Emergencies (EiE) being imparted to children faces all sorts of dilemmas: since they can only attain education pertaining to Myanmar curriculum, what will they use this education for, if they do not repatriate, or do not have job legitimacy in their host country? At stake is an identity crisis, and the engine of individual growth, education, is not playing a pivotal role. Since sporadic positive EiE results in Syrian or Palestinian camps contrast those in Rohingya camps, the different Rohingya realities, which include not having a home to return to, raise a pertinent pedagogical question: how can the indigenous knowledge of refugee children even connect with the transnational dissemination of EiE knowledge? Ontologically, with host-country willingness and repatriation being central roles, the obvious long-term Rohingya educational outcomes of a ‘lost generation’ stare us all in the Cox’s Bazaar refugee camps. Theoretically, what began as an ‘interdependent’ migratory flow destined for eventual repatriation, as before, may deteriorate into James Rosenau ‘turbulent’, even anomic, ending.