Keywords

10.1 Setting the Scene

I sat in the living room of Mark and Rebecca, a South Sudanese married couple in their 30s, listening to their stories as child refugees who fled from southern Sudan in the early 1990s and finally found their way to Kakuma refugee camp. Both were educated by various humanitarian agencies in the camp until they were eventually resettled by the UNHCR to live in San Jose, California with a small community of other South Sudanese refugees. Both Mark and Rebecca (not their real names) valued education highly and their extended families’ tuition fees in Kenya were the primary expense for which their remittances were used. At the time, Rebecca was going to nursing school part-time while working in a retail store and Mark had just completed his MBA at an online university. Struggling to find full-time employment in the San Francisco Bay area that matched his qualifications, Mark said that between 2011 and 2013 he regularly returned to South Sudan for up to 6 months at a time to work as a business consultant. These efforts were his attempt to help to develop South Sudan as an independent nation, which had to come to a halt at the end of 2013 when civil war broke out in South Sudan only 2 years after its independence from Sudan.

At the time of our interview in 2015, they were struggling financially to care for their five children in one of the most expensive regions in the US; however, they both argued that, without their education they and their family in Africa would be significantly worse off. Education led to financial security, a freedom that many of their family members severely lacked as refugees in Kenya. Mark and Rebecca’s story is one that became tangled in the complicated migrations built on the intertwining relationship between the pursuit of education and the restrictions of being a refugee, whether it be dependency on the humanitarian system or coping with the instability in one’s homeland. The population represented in this chapter had been displaced from South Sudan several times in the previous four decades, fleeing to refugee camps in the neighbouring nations of Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia. Some members of their diaspora had the opportunity to resettle in Western nations like the US or Canada, enabling them to both pursue their own education and fund the education of their extended family members still living as refugees in Kakuma. Others maintain a more liminal lifestyle, pursuing limited migration opportunities based on the strength of their social networks.

As suggested by Chanoff (2005) and El Jack (2012), education symbolises freedom for this population – something which they have arguably lacked after generations of oppression and persecution – and leads to self-reliance, employment opportunities, livelihood development and thus independence from the limitations of their refugee status. This chapter explores how the pursuit of education facilitated onward migration practices, first throughout Kenya and Uganda and then to Western nations, through the sending of transnational remittances to pay the cost of tuition, the careful navigation of social networks contributing to mentorship roles within families and extended communities, and the establishment of ties to humanitarian or charity organisations.

Based on the data presented, I argue that the pursuit of education contributed to onward mobility practices for Kakuma’s South Sudanese community, often directly contrasting with the immobility associated with their refugee status. The people represented in this chapter navigated their limited financial resources in combination with their transnational social networks and the potential resources provided by the humanitarian aid system. If lucky, the South Sudanese men and women of Kakuma were able to attend secondary school outside the refugee camp and to eventually go to university in Nairobi or in a Western nation. Scholarships, whether in the form of remittances from family members living in another nation, small community organisations formed by the South Sudanese diaspora or large aid organisations, enabled refugees to transcend the limitations of their refugee status during the course of their education and potentially afterwards.

The chapter begins by briefly examining the liminality of Kenya’s refugees and the need to rely on educational opportunities to ensure mobility. Onward mobility for this population was particularly important because, as many South Sudanese men and women in Kakuma argued, as soon as refugees in Kenya complete their education they are often forced to return to the camp unless they can find further educational opportunities or employment made available through their education. The next section examines the existing literature on why education is so highly valued among this population and how it is associated with refugee empowerment and onward mobility practices. There is then a brief overview of transnationalism and the ways in which transnational networks facilitate the exchange of social and financial capital, particularly among those who have been displaced by war. The succeeding four sections are based on the values and experiences of this population, particularly their investment in the future, their ability to attend secondary school outside Kakuma, the ways in which they navigated their opportunities to pursue higher education and, finally, the experiences of refugee immobility after the completion of their education. Together, these experiences represent a combination of liminality associated with my participants’ refugee status and of mobility made accessible through opportunities to pursue their education. Finally, the chapter ends by conceptualising what education and onward mobility – and often immobility – mean for the South Sudanese community of Kakuma and their wider diaspora. In the case of this population, education – facilitated by onward migration practices – is perceived to be the solution their socio-economic marginalisation as refugees.

10.2 Displacement, Social Liminality and Diasporic Investment

South Sudan, recognised as southern Sudan prior to 2011, has been in a near constant state of civil unrest or civil war since Sudan’s independence in 1956. Since the 1950s, the region has witnessed three civil wars based primarily on ethnic discrimination and the imbalance of power and representation within the national government. The refugee population who are the subject of this chapter have been refugees for decades, living in a protracted state of exile in Kenya for almost 30 years, during which time their freedom of movement and ability to develop their livelihoods have been severely restricted.

Kakuma has been the host of South Sudanese refugee populations since its inauguration in 1992, totalling approximately 90,000 people at the time of this study in 2018 (UNHCR, 2018). The majority of my participants identified as members of the ‘Lost Boys of Sudan’ community or their children and had consequently either been born inside the refugee camp or had lived there since childhood.Footnote 1

In order to receive protection and assistance from humanitarian organisations like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the majority of refugees in Kenya are required to live inside refugee camps like Kakuma. Kakuma lies on the far north-west border of Kenya in an extremely remote and arid location, on traditionally inhospitable land of seasonal flood plains. Once a refugee is registered within a camp in Kenya his or her freedom of movement is severely restricted, only granted for ‘adequate and compelling reasons’ such as employment, education, the pursuit of specialised healthcare, immigration purposes and, in rare cases, on business grounds (Betts et al., 2018; RCK, n.d.).

Due to the lack of employment opportunities available legally, the refugee residents of this camp remain dependent on food rations and healthcare provided by humanitarian organisations, aid which has been argued to have gradually decreased over the previous decades due to the lack of funding (Verdirame, 1999; Crisp, 2002; Bartolomei et al., 2003; Ossome, 2013; World Food Programme, 2017). Due to their inability to acquire legal work permits in Kenya because of their prima facie refugee status, the vast majority of refugees who work in Kakuma are labelled as ‘volunteers’ who work for an incentive that is a fraction of what a Kenyan national would make for the same job (Verdirame, 1999; Horst, 2006; Betts et al., 2018). Consequently, the salaries that refugees in Kakuma are entitled to earn are barely enough to supplement their insufficient food rations and healthcare and are rarely enough to help refugees pay for the tuition and school supplies of their children’s education. Consequently, the refugees of this community who continue to live inside Kakuma live in a state of restricted mobility and significant insecurity, forcibly placed on them due to their victim status and lack of alternative options.

Among Kakuma’s South Sudanese transnational participants and their families who chose to support them, education was the most important investment in the future welfare of both themselves as individuals and of their extended families. Almost all the participants in this study argued that it was the responsibility of each family member to care for the welfare of the others in their community, with the primary aim of ensuring the continued survival of their family network. Investing in the education of this population, whether by paying for tuition or by facilitating the social networks needed to receive a scholarship, ensured that the refugees of Kakuma could leave the refugee setting, at least temporarily, to attend secondary school and potentially university throughout Kenya and Uganda and, in rare cases, the US or Canada.

10.3 Education, Onward Mobility and Refugee Empowerment

Several studies written about the South Sudanese refugee community, internationally recognised as the Lost Boys of Sudan, many of whom have been resettled to places like the US and Canada, suggest that the members of this population are active transnational participants and place significant importance on the role of education within their community. In Chanoff’s (2005) study, resettled Lost Boys said that, during their time in Kakuma, they began to see the difference in the quality of life and available opportunities between the educated and the uneducated. El Jack (2012, 20) claims that refugees in Kakuma are taught that education helps them to rebuild their post-war communities and that many South Sudanese began to perceive education as a ‘means of survival and a driving force to succeed’. The aspiration to pursue education, and the value that they placed on it, are reflected in the rates in which the South Sudanese diaspora pursue higher education and invest in the education of the young adults of their families living in Africa (Patterson, 2020).

In a study on Kakuma’s youth, the attainment of higher education was equated with the ability to leave the camp, to aid in the rebuilding of their home nations and to earn enough money to adequately support themselves and their extended families. As suggested by Bellino (2018, 542) and Patterson (2020), the aspiration to pursue higher forms of education ‘broadened future possibilities’ by directly contrasting with the social liminality and the physical immobility of life as a refugee in Kakuma. In both these studies, nearly every young person interviewed argued that education was crucial to their livelihoods and expressed an interest in attending university, thus desiring migration to elsewhere in Kenya or potentially to another nation.

A recent study conducted by Betts et al. (2018) on Kakuma argues that approximately 1000 refugees travelled to Nairobi for educational purposes in 2017, particularly to attend university; this figure, however, is not representative of all education migration networks from Kakuma due to the study’s failure to acknowledge how many students travelled outside of Kakuma to attend secondary school or university elsewhere in East Africa. The pursuit of secondary education outside the refugee camp was particularly important to students and their transnational family members who chose to support them due to the perception that the quality and extent of their education constituted the solution to their social liminality as protracted refugees (Patterson, 2020). Many students in Kakuma who dreamt of becoming working professionals believed that the education which they received in the camp was inadequate due to the lack of resources and the teachers who typically lacked training and experience (Mareng, 2010; Dryden-Peterson, 2015; Mendenhall et al., 2015; Patterson, 2020).

Bellino (2018) argues that returns on the financial investments made in education, such as the cost of tuition, were highly dependent on subsequent migration and a presumed status shift. For example, the highest sought-after university scholarship available to Kakuma’s youth was provided by an organisation called the Windle Trust. This scholarship guaranteed a university education in Canada and Canadian citizenship and ensured that its recipients could become leaders within their families and communities, capable of financially supporting them in the future. Bellino suggests that education was strongly interlinked with social, economic and spatial mobility for Kakuma’s youth.

One question, raised by King and Raghuram (2013) and Raghuram (2013), is why people migrate through the pursuit of education. Do people migrate to pursue education or pursue education in order to migrate? Or, as evidenced by other chapters in this book (de Hoon and van Liempt, Chap. 3; Della Puppa and Sredanovic, Chap. 9; Formenti, Chap. 11), do parents migrate in order to improve the educational opportunities for their children? King and Raghuram argue that much of the existing literature on international students ignores the diversity of experiences and goals of education-based migration, failing to critically interrogate the words ‘student’ and ‘international’. These authors argue that experiences of mobility vary significantly based on a student’s level of study, destination country, overall life trajectory and the environment in which education is pursued. It is crucial to examine the degree of constraint determined by cost (fees, the availability of scholarships and cost of living) and the availability of accessible educational opportunities. They suggest that most of the current research on international student migration focuses on the middle and upper classes, thus ignoring the experiences and push factors which encourage students from impoverished backgrounds to migrate in the pursuit of their education and the obstacles which they face.

The pursuit of education in sub-Saharan Africa is closely related to mobility, whether this be physical, social or economic. Porter et al. (2010) suggest that young people’s lives in this region of the world are commonly shaped by their economic and political exclusion and that access to both education and physical mobility can be a key factor in determining their ability to escape marginalisation. As argued by King and Raghuram (2013) and Raghuram (2013), it is important to consider these and other variations of motivation to pursue migration through education. Migration for secondary school and university education is common in Africa and is perceived to be an escape from poverty due to the assumption of increased social mobility and livelihood development. In the refugee context, in which education is one of the few justifications for migration out of the camp setting in Kenya, it is perceived to be a pathway out of the refugee system in which students are investing in their ability to become leaders within their families and their ability to earn a living wage.

There are several factors which are likely to influence a student’s desire to migrate to urban locations or to a foreign nation in pursuit of their tertiary education, in particular. According to Kritz (2013) and Rosenzweig (2006), the primary push factor for students leaving their region or nation of residence is the lack of accessible universities in their home nation or current nation of residence. In contrast, pull factors encouraging students to migrate to cities or other countries include the prospect of earning higher wages. Varghese (2008) extends these potential pull factors by also including an ideological affinity to the place of migration, whether because a student is proficient in the language spoken there or because of a university’s perceived academic superiority and relaxed visa regulations for student migrants. Furthermore, Raghuram (2013) and Waters (2006) argue that the pursuit of mobility through international education aids the development not just of human capital (i.e. transferable skills and knowledge) but also of social and cultural capital through social mobility within a migrant’s sending country.

In the case of refugee displacement and protracted exile, education is associated with both physical and cognitive mobility – an escape from the restrictiveness of life as a refugee (Dryden-Peterson, 2017). When a refugee in Kenya’s access to services and protection is dependent on their residence within a refugee camp and they are faced with an unknown future, education is empowerment. Dryden-Peterson and Giles (2010) argue that access to higher education enables refugees to move beyond their displacement and expand their ability to make strategic life decisions as the quality and quantity of information and skills accessible to them expands and improves. In Kakuma, specifically, education has been shown to be positively correlated with the ability to speak multiple languages, the development of skills and the ability to translate these skills into income-generating activities (Betts et al., 2018).

Dryden-Peterson and Giles (2010, 4) suggest that, among refugees who have graduated from secondary school, pursuing higher education is an ‘almost universal desire’ due to the perception of its emancipatory potential. However, access to a university education implies several barriers for refugees, including the extreme cost in comparison to their income-generating abilities, the lack of documentation lost during war and the lack of recognition of their academic credentials for their education in a refugee camp. Therefore, the most common ways in which universities become accessible to refugees are through remittances, scholarships and/or access to free or low-fee services provided by NGOs in collaboration with universities.

10.4 Transnational Networks, Remittances and Funding Education

Transnationalism has been described as the economic, social and political networks between multi-stranded communities that transcend geographic location and borders between nations (Basch et al., 2005). The theory on transnational migration patterns examines the ‘strength of ties’ and the embeddedness of interpersonal relationships, collective membership beyond the borders between nations, a sense of shared values and expectations, loyalty and mutual reciprocity among a community who share a common identity and homeland (Vertovec, 2003). Transnational social practices imply an exchange of ideas, money and various social resources through active communication with community members in other nations, the preservation of important relationships and the establishment of networks which link groups of people in multiple nations together.

Mata-Codesal et al. (2011) argue that transnational practices – specifically, the exchange of social and economic resources – typically follow a linear flow of people, money, material goods, socio-cultural influences and human relations. Transnational practices create what these authors identify as ‘corridors’ between nations of immigration and emigration, strung between the bonds of the migrants and their family members who remained behind. The authors found that remittance corridors were embedded within the structural relationships of dependency between transnational participants. Transnational ties are argued by Faist (2000) to be based on mutual obligation, reciprocity and community solidarity and are built upon strong familial bonds and community membership. These sustained ties between individuals and groups facilitate the exchange of ideas and resources for the economic and social advancement of both the migrants and their communities in their homeland or elsewhere in the world.

It is important to note that remittances do not always flow from the nation of migration to the nation of origin or the homeland. Just as people have developed onward migration habits, moving from one nation to another out of necessity or in pursuit for a better life, their transnational social and financial networks are similarly strung between multiple nations, often overlapping and interconnected (for another African example, in the context of remittances, see Chap. 4 by Flikweert et al.). For example, among refugee communities who often practice onward migration due to conflict, policy decisions or simply in search of a better life, Van Hear (2003) theorises what he identifies as domains of migration and, thus, potential transnational networks, among refugee communities. He argues that refugee networks have the ability to connect community members both between and within a refugee population’s home nations, nations of asylum and nations of resettlement. According to Van Hear’s model, refugee social and economic remittances have the potential to flow in multiple directions not only between the homeland and a nation of migration but also between two nations of migration.

Active transnational kinship networks and the sending of remittances to low- and middle-income households have been shown by multiple studies to contribute to an increased access to education, higher quality nutrition, sanitation and healthcare (Edwards & Ureta, 2003; Adams & Page, 2005; Hildebrandt & McKenzie, 2005; Adams, 2006; Acosta et al., 2015). These studies suggest that remittances have the potential to significantly influence the long-term welfare of the recipients by reducing extreme poverty and increasing access to new labour markets, educational resources and adequate healthcare and nutrition. When education is one of the few opportunities accessible for refugees, enabling them to leave the camp, escape the limitations of their refugee status and engage in onward migration patterns, the cost of education is likely to become the primary investment of a refugee transnational community.

10.5 Methodology

This chapter is based on data amassed during two research studies, my MA and PhD theses respectively, collected in California, the UK and in Kakuma refugee camp in north-west Kenya between August 2015 and July 2018. These studies each examined transnational activity among resettled refugees who were supporting refugee family members and protracted refugees living in Kakuma, all members of the South Sudanese diaspora. For these research projects, I utilised a combination of participant observation to examine family life as well as semi-structured interviews to understand the dynamics of their transnational activity.

This data represents the experiences of 80 refugees living in Kenya and 21 resettled refugees and economic migrants living in the US and the UK who sought to support the education of their families throughout East Africa. The men and women who participated ranged in age between 18 and 69 years old and expressed a wide variety of experiences of displacement, mobility, transnational participation and the pursuit of education.

Education, migration, transnational participation and the refugee status of either themselves or their family members were themes addressed in both the participant recruitment and data collection for these studies, all representing key influencing factors in their aspirations for the future, their past experiences of onward movement and their continued networks of attachment. I was introduced to my key informants in both the US and the UK through our mutual involvement in small charity organisations developed by the local South Sudanese community to empower members of their diaspora, locally and transnationally, to develop their livelihoods and pursue education. In California, specifically, I worked with a faith-based organisation called Hope with South Sudan which raised money to fund the education of South Sudanese refugee children living in Kakuma.

In Kakuma refugee camp, I recruited four men who identified themselves as leaders within their communities in the camp to help me to find people who received money from family members abroad. Between November 2017 and July 2018, I followed these men throughout the refugee camp, shared meals with their families and talked on the phone with their brothers and sisters living in the West. More importantly, I watched, listened and participated in the struggles for freedom experienced by the men and women of this community who persisted in their desire for an education and a drive to live beyond the refugee camp.

10.6 An Investment in Their Future

Education was the most common investment among the South Sudanese transnational participants living in Kakuma who were interviewed for this research. When the participants received remittances that were not for emergencies, such as a lack of food or a medical issue, the money was most often spent on school supplies, uniforms and, when possible, tuition at a school outside the refugee camp. Within this community, education was strongly associated with the future advancement of the family unit as a whole and the ability of young adults to become leaders capable of supporting both themselves and their community. Rosie, a mother of three young children, argued that ‘our children’s education is the development of the world. If a child is educated, he will help his community. He can become a doctor or a teacher and help others’. Since education implied significant costs for my refugee participants, the importance placed on its potential as an investment went beyond the needs of the individual receiving the education and extended to the belief that a child would eventually be able to support his or her parents, siblings and other community members.

Coupled with the pursuit of education through physical and social mobility was a strong sense that it was the responsibility of the members of this community to contribute what little they had for the future advancement of the family as a whole. For example, Rosie, above, said that she sold a portion of her already limited food rations each month to pay for her children’s school supplies in the form of notebooks, pens and uniforms. This sacrifice ensured that her children could continue their education, potentially excel in their exams and become leaders of their community in the future, capable of helping others.

Of the 21 transnational participants who lived in either the US or the UK, all believed that, because they were fortunate enough to be able to leave East Africa to move to a Western nation and to earn a significantly higher wage due to their education, it was their responsibility to care for others in their community. Within the South Sudanese diaspora, care often took the form of committing to pay for the tuition of a child in their family or using their social networks to find someone who could. Ensuring that these refugee children had access to education meant that they would, firstly, be entitled to leave the refugee camp at least temporarily and, secondly, that they would potentially gain access to further educational or employment opportunities that they would not have had access to if they continued to live inside Kakuma.

Although most of the young adults who contributed to this study were striving to get out of Kakuma due to its physical restrictions, I met two women who specifically chose to go to the refugee camp for its educational opportunities. Although the quality of education accessible to refugees in Kakuma was poor, it was also free. When no other opportunities were available and in a culture in which girls were significantly under-educated compared to boys, a free education in a refugee camp was an investment towards their social advancement, even if this was also accompanied by a temporary restriction of their physical mobility.

One 18-year-old girl named AchienneFootnote 2 had recently arrived in Kakuma from South Sudan at the time of her interview and dreamed of becoming a human-rights lawyer for women experiencing sexual abuse during the civil war. Her dream was less focused on livelihood development and more on personal freedom and the ability to participate in the nation-rebuilding process when the time came. She commented, ‘if I had not come to Kakuma then I would have been married off by now and have a baby. I would not have been able to go to school and I would not be able to help my community’. For Achienne, her move to Kakuma to register as a refugee and then the pursuit of her higher education, whether it be in Nairobi or in the US/Canada, were simply necessary steps for her to eventually return to South Sudan socio-economically empowered to make a difference.

A girl by the name of Ann also chose to live in Kakuma for similar reasons, even if mobility implied the restriction of mobility associated with one’s refugee status. Prior coming to Kakuma, Ann and her parents had been living in Nakuru Town, several hours north of Nairobi. However, since her family were South Sudanese and living outside a refugee camp, they were considered illegal economic migrants and could therefore not earn enough money to pay for Ann’s tuition fees.Footnote 3 She said that her parents had decided that she should move to Kakuma with her grandparents and register as a refugee in order to qualify for the free, although limited, education to which refugees are entitled. ‘I came [to Kakuma] because I need a future. I need an education to support my family’. Even though Ann would have preferred to receive her secondary-school education outside the refugee camp, due to the cost of tuition fees and the inability for refugees in Kenya to earn a sustainable living, moving to pursue an education in this case meant risking limiting her mobility in the future due to her refugee status.

10.7 Attending School on the Outside and Dreaming Big

Education – secondary school in particular – was often pursued outside of Kakuma if possible for a variety of reasons. As mentioned previously, the pursuit of education was one of the few reasons for which refugees in Kenya were granted official movement passes by the UNHCR and the Kenyan government, enabling a registered refugee to travel outside the refugee camp and within Kenya legally. The ability to go to school outside Kakuma meant that, over the course of their education, they were treated like any other student in Kenya and not limited to their refugee status. Just as regular Kenyan secondary schools lured refugee students in with their disconnection from the refugee system, the conditions of life as a student in Kakuma were a significant push factor. Students claimed that it was not uncommon for as many as 200 students to be in each classroom, taught by unqualified teachers, in extreme heat, all contributing to poor study conditions. These standards within the classroom, coupled with the lack of electricity to provide light by which to read at night and the vast distances required to walk to school, contributed to the feeling that students were performing far below their potential ability.

Achienne and her brother Isaac argued, respectively, that:

[s]chool in the camp is very hard. It’s very hot and dusty and you cannot concentrate on your books. Even though we have an education in the camp it is not a conducive environment. At home we do not have electricity. When we come home we cannot study because it is so hot. It greatly affects the children who are here who want to have a future.

As a student, the climate is terrible for studying. I have to walk for an hour to get to school. During lunch I cannot study well because it is hot. After I come back from school I am tired and feel like sleeping all day. Many of the schools [in the camp] do not have qualified teachers and many don't even attend lessons, so the students are not serious.

Opportunities to pursue mobility through education varied significantly in location and were dependent on the extent of their social networks. Due to their limited ability to afford transportation and boarding fees, some refugee parents chose to send their children to a Kenyan school directly outside the refugee camp, which required tuition fees but was still considerably cheaper compared to elsewhere in Kenya. One man – Gabriel – claimed that, due to the poor quality of education of the schools in the camp, he chose to send his two children to secondary school in Kakuma Town, neighbouring the camp. ‘In town there is serious learning unlike in the camp. When they get the chance to go to a real school, they can get a better life and a job and provide for their family’. In the case of Gabriel’s children, their tuition costs him 30,000 Kenyan shillings (£225) each year for his two children in addition to the cost of their boda boda (motorcycle taxi) to and from the camp each day. Even though he could not afford to send his children to boarding school elsewhere in Kenya, he invested what little money he had to get his children out of the refugee camp for their education, even if it was just in the neighbouring town.

When possible, refugees who had sufficiently strong social networks, whether on a transnational or a local scale, often managed to find someone or an organisation to sponsor their secondary education, one term at a time. To the members of this community, the ability to go to school outside the refugee camp implied potential costs but was rewarded with a higher standard of education and a reduction in their limited mobility associated with their refugee status. Of the 80 men and women living in Kakuma who participated in this study, 12 were able to attend secondary school outside the refugee camp; their tuition fees were paid either by family members abroad through remittances, by sponsors through community organisations established in Western nations or through international scholarships.

A 23-year-old man named Jok, who had graduated from secondary school 3 years before his interview, explained how he found someone to sponsor his education:

I had a sponsor in Australia who was paying my school fees until I completed high school. My friend was close to [my sponsor] so he connected me to him ... he supported me for four years. They chose a school in Kitale for me because of the low school fees and found guardians for me to live with.

In Jok’s case, his sponsor was a resettled South Sudanese man who was a friend of a friend and who arranged to pay for Jok’s secondary-school education. This arrangement included the sending of tuition fees every term and finding a guardian to house Jok in exchange for him maintaining good grades throughout his education.

Another man – Sam – said that his uncle financially supported his secondary education in Nakuru until one year before his graduation. Due to his own financial struggles in the US, his uncle suddenly had to stop paying Sam’s tuition fees. Faced with the risk of dropping out and being forced to return to Kakuma without a secondary-school degree, Sam’s teachers worked together to find him a scholarship. ‘I played football and brought attention to the school, so they gave me a scholarship’. In Sam’s case, when his transnational family network was suddenly incapable of supporting his education in a Kenyan secondary school, his extended social network that he had developed during his education filled in the financial gaps and thus prevented his forced move back to Kakuma before he had graduated.

Of the 20 young adults aged 18–25 living as refugees in Kenya who participated in this study, all expressed interest in pursuing higher education. For these men and women, university was strongly associated with physical mobility and their livelihood development directly contrasting with the liminality of their current lifestyle as refugees in Kakuma. University education represented an escape from the harsh environment of Kakuma and the unleashing of their potential that had been stifled by the refugee system.

Most of these men and women expressed an interest in attending university outside Africa, particularly in the US, Canada and Australia, where the majority of their transnational family members resided. While university in Kenya or Uganda equated to the potential for higher salaries and a legal right to work in Kenya, university in a Western nation implied potential citizenship of that nation and an escape from their refugee status. Achienne’s brother, Isaac, aspired to go to medical school and, at the time of his interview, had set his sights on living in the US with his uncle. ‘He wants me to go to [university] near where he lives – like George Washington University or Georgetown. He is trying to help me find a scholarship. I know that this is the time to apply for university, but I am not really sure where to start’. Despite most of these young adults expressing an interest in attending university in a Western nation, none had the economic resources to fund their higher education – particularly outside Kenya – nor any knowledge of how to apply for a placement or funding in these foreign universities.

10.8 Navigating Aid, Social Networks and Opportunities for Higher Education

Due to the limited earning ability of refugees in Kenya, in order to gain access to higher education these young adults needed to carefully navigate their social networks and the resources provided by various aid organisations. One 19-year-old woman named Jess had recently graduated from a prestigious school in Kakuma and decided to live with family and friends in Nairobi in order to find funding opportunities for her university education. Jess had travelled to and was temporarily living in Nairobi in order to network with friends of friends and various aid organisations who would sit down with her. ‘I want to become a doctor. I would like to leave Kenya if possible but I need money to support myself’. If successful in getting funding and obtaining a medical degree, Jess wanted to travel back to Kakuma and help the members of her community to fight the diseases and malnutrition associated with their poverty and the inhospitable environment of the camp.

Four of the participants in this study, all men, were attending or had attended an institution of higher education at the time of their interview; three of these universities were in Nairobi and one in Kampala, Uganda. For all these men, their educations were paid for by church-sponsored community organisations based in Western nations. Two of these men, James and Patrick, had received university scholarships because of their role as leaders, elders and pastors in Kakuma. In comparison, the two other men – Ajak and Mike – both under the age of 25, claimed that they were selected for a scholarship because of their sisters’ relationships in the US and Canada with their funding organisations.

Ajak, the brother of Rebecca, who was introduced at the beginning of this chapter, managed to be sponsored throughout his entire secondary school and university education. In collaboration with several members of the Lost Boys community in San José, California and their church, Mark and Rebecca helped to create an organisation called Hope with South Sudan whose sole purpose was to fund the education of South Sudanese refugees in Kakuma, primarily the extended family of its board members. Due to the strength of his transnational family relationships and their social networks in California, Ajak was fortunate enough to leave Kakuma to attend both school and university in Nairobi for 8 years. The organisations which funded the education of these men were dependent on the continued support of the South Sudanese diaspora and their cultural and religious communities. Due to the extent of their sisters’ social networks, Ajak was able to study political science at the University of Nairobi and Mike studied cyber security at Kabete National Polytechnic and was hired to work in IT for his university.

At the time of his interview Ajak was planning on moving back to South Sudan because he had recently been hired as an intern with a government organisation. He said ‘I know the war is not over, but the current government needs help. I can do that’. Like Achienne, Ajak believed that it was the responsibility of their generation to aid in the nation-rebuilding process and was willing to move back to South Sudan, currently in the midst of a civil war, to help to change their nation for the better. In these cases, their education, whether it be in Kakuma, throughout Kenya or elsewhere in the world, acted as a stepping-stone on their return to South Sudan as educated citizens capable of creating change.

Finally, I interviewed two men whose children were given scholarships through the Windle Trust, which allowed them to attend a Canadian university of their choice on a full scholarship. One man, named Lee, explained:

My daughter has always gotten perfect grades since primary school. Because she did so well in the national exams, she got a scholarship to attend secondary school in Lodwar. When she finished she was ranked sixth in the nation and now she studies business in Vancouver.

Andrew talked of similar experiences in which his son was picked to study engineering at the University of Alberta. ‘He plans to stay there and work as an engineer. Once he is able to support us, he wants to bring me and his wife and children to Canada to live with him’.

The Windle Trust scholarship was particularly sought after by Kakuma’s young adult community because being chosen meant that they would also be entitled to Canadian citizenship. In this way they would be able to work freely and to financially support their family members who continued to live in Kakuma as refugees. Although the selection process was incredibly competitive, this scholarship was also the most accessible method by which to leave the refugee camp permanently for both the recipients and their family members. Access to education and the ability to navigate humanitarian aid opportunities entitled some refugees to lives and careers beyond the liminality of their refugee status and were therefore often sought after by almost all the participants in this study who were then living in Kakuma.

10.9 Post-education and Refugee Immobility

An important aspect of the experiences of Kakuma’s South Sudanese refugee population is what happens after the completion of their education. Since the mobility of the men and women represented in this chapter was conditional on their enrollment in an educational institution due their refugee status, they were often forced to return to the refugee camp after they had graduated. At the time of their interview, both Jok and Sam had graduated from secondary school in Kitale and Nakuru; however, since their refugee movement permit only entitled them to move freely throughout Kenya during the course of their education, they were forced to move back to the refugee camp, where they were both ‘volunteering’ as teachers in exchange for an incentive of 7000 Kenyan shillings (£50) per month. James and Patrick spoke of similar experiences despite both graduating with BAs from Kenyan and Ugandan universities. Since these men were not entitled to receive a work permit in Kenya due to their refugee status and the restriction of their rights, they were forced to return to Kakuma. At the time of their interview, both James and Patrick were unemployed in the camp, incapable of utilising their undergraduate degrees and were undertaking unpaid roles as pastors and community leaders within their neighbourhoods.

Similarly, there were several participants who had never had the opportunity to leave Kakuma, despite the pursuit of their education, due to their limited ability to pay the tuition fees and to utilise their social networks to find funding opportunities. Although both Achienne and Ann chose to go to Kakuma specifically for their education, they needed to do so due to the lack of available opportunities elsewhere. Achienne left South Sudan to become a refugee in Kenya because of the lack of educational opportunities for girls in her home nation and her desire to aid in the rebuilding of South Sudan through her education. Comparatively, Ann was already living in Kenya – outside the refugee camp, albeit illegally – but chose to go to Kakuma as a refugee because she was entitled to free tuition in the camp. Although Gabriel’s children were fortunate enough to find funding for their education in Kakuma Town, due to the limited financial resources available to his family, they were not able to afford boarding fees and were therefore forced to return to the refugee camp in the evenings.

Finally, there are refugees who were balancing the conditions of refugee immobility and the pursuit of mobility through education. Jess had completed her education in Kakuma and, at the time of her interview, had travelled to Nairobi, illegally and without a movement pass, in an attempt to utilise her social networks to find a university scholarship either through a humanitarian aid organisation or a transnational or local community organisation. She was willing to risk potential deportation back to South Sudan by illegally travelling to Nairobi in the attempt to find opportunities which would allow her to pursue her education and move on from the liminality of her refugee status.

The experiences of Mark, Rebecca, Ajak, Mike and the children of Lee and Andrew were the exceptions in the mobility of the refugees of this population after the completion of their education. These men and women were able to successfully navigate the resources available to them through a combination of humanitarian assistance and social networks which offered resettlement opportunities, scholarships and employment after the completion of their education. It was the exceptional cases that provided hope that the education of the refugee children of their community would lead to onward mobility, particularly after the completion of their degrees. However, the majority of the people who were fortunate enough to be able to move outside the refugee camp in pursuit of their education were also forced to return due to their inability to break free of their refugee status in Kenya.

10.10 Conceptualising Education, Opportunity and (Im)Mobility

In many ways, education equated to the ability to leave the liminality of the refugee camp and their refugee status through what Bellino (2018, 542) identifies as the ‘broaden[ing] of their possibilities’. After three decades and several generations of South Sudanese refugees who were raised and lived the majority of their lives inside Kakuma, education represented hope and opportunity. At the physical level, the pursuit of education enabled this refugee community to migrate from one place to another beyond the boundaries of the camp. As one of the few exceptions to the limitations of their freedom of mobility in Kenya, enrollment in a Kenyan educational institution facilitated the ability for refugees to apply for movement passes. This entitlement meant that these men and women could travel within Kenya without fear of harassment by the police or of deportation to South Sudan. If a student managed to achieve high enough marks and was fortunate enough to receive a scholarship, the pursuit of higher education also supported onward migration practices to nations like Uganda, the US and Canada or back to South Sudan.

Education and the mobility associated with it, both physical and social, enabled refugees to seek an existence beyond the limitations of their refugee status and to work towards the advancement of their and their families’ welfare and livelihood development. For many of the members of this community, Kakuma represented three decades-worth of social, economic and political marginalisation developed upon a system of dependency. In comparison, education directly contrasted with this liminal lifestyle by giving refugee students the opportunity to pursue migration throughout Kenya and potentially elsewhere in the world. To many of the participants in this study, education – pursued mostly through local and transnational community networks and resources – was perceived to be the solution to their displacement.

I found that the pursuit of education and the migratory aspirations and opportunities associated with it, was strongly influenced by the bonds of kinship developed across transnational networks. As represented by Mark and Rebecca’s story in this chapter, the members of the South Sudanese diaspora who gained the opportunity to settle in the US and the UK highly valued education and the opportunities that it gave towards the advancement of their families and communities, whether perceived or actual. In an effort to pass down their success to the next generation of refugees within their community, financial remittances were sent to the refugee camp with the intention of investing in the future of their transnational community through the payment of tuition fees and school supplies.

Transnational community organisations and friendship networks which developed among members of the South Sudanese diaspora living in Western nations were also regularly utilised to fund the education of refugees living in camps like Kakuma. As illustrated by Hope with South Sudan, these community organisations collectively raised money to send groups of refugee children from Kakuma to schools throughout Kenya, often funding both their secondary school and university education. Similarly, as represented by Jok’s story, when transnational family members were not able to meet the financial expectations placed on them by their refugee family members, its was not uncommon for these networks to facilitate sponsors outside of their family network. If not connected through a community organisation, South Sudanese young adults might have their tuition fees, school supplies and cost of living covered by a friend of a family member or friend of a friend for the duration of their studies.

One particular question which this chapter raises is whether the refugees represented in this study migrated to pursue an education or sought an education as an opportunity to migrate (cf. King & Raghuram, 2013). Based on the experiences of the men and women represented, education, migration and the future advancement of them and their families, including an escape from the liminality of their refugee status, were strongly interrelated. As discussed above, education was one of the few justifications for migration for refugees within Kenya, who were otherwise limited by policies which restricted their freedom of movement. The pursuit of education was legal for refugees in Kenya, was relatively affordable (particularly with the help of transnational family members and members of the South Sudanese diaspora) and offered a potential escape from both within the refugee camp physically and from the limitations of their refugee status existentially.

Both onward-migration practices and the pursuit of education enabled these men and women to dream of future opportunities for themselves as individuals, their families and the future stability of their home nation. Some just wanted the opportunity to leave the refugee camp with the legal right to their freedom of movement which the vast majority of their refugee family and community members were denied. For the young adults in this study, many of whom were born and spent most of their lives in Kakuma, education and mobility meant that they could aspire to develop a better future for their people. Education outside the camp entitled them to dream of becoming doctors and lawyers, to help their families and friends in Kakuma and to help to rebuild their home nation of South Sudan. Finally, whether pursued in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, elsewhere in Kenya or Africa, education enabled the members of this diaspora to facilitate the further advancement and mobility of those left behind in Kakuma.

10.11 Strung Between Liminality and Mobility

The pursuit of education through mobility was strongly associated with my participants’ social mobility and directly contrasted the liminality of life in the refugee camp. For the men and women who were fortunate enough to receive funding for their education, whether it was through remittances from family abroad or international scholarships, education implied physical, social and cognitive mobility and a break, at least temporarily, from the refugee system which restricts them.

Interestingly, three of the people represented in this chapter (Mark, Achienne and Ajak) all had aspirations to use their education to return to their home nation of South Sudan and aid in the nation-rebuilding process. Whether it be the development of the economy through business, aiding in the political stability of the government or ensuring justice for victims of human-rights violations committed during the war, these participants believed that their education was the key to their nation’s future. In these cases, physical mobility through East Africa and elsewhere in the world entitled them to significant social mobility and the ability to be leaders within their community capable of creating change in their nation of origin.

All the stories in this chapter represented circular onward-mobility patterns due to a combination of their refugee status and the restrictions associated with it, their opportunities to migrate through the pursuit of their education and their aspirations for employment after the completion of their education. It was not uncommon for participants to move from South Sudan to Kakuma, to elsewhere in Kenya, to a Western nation and then back to East Africa.

Each person’s established social networks – whether transnational or local – and ability to navigate aid and funding opportunities strongly influenced how far a refugee was able to migrate. If they were lucky, these men and women might have found ways to stay in Nairobi or in a Western nation or may have willingly moved back to South Sudan if they had reasonable career prospects. However, the vast majority of my participants in Kakuma were forced to move back to the refugee camp after the completion of their education. Due to their liminal status within Kenya and in which the pursuit of education only offered temporary mobility, the inability to find further opportunities through their social networks and limited humanitarian aid resources resulted in their continued social and economic liminality. Although education empowered these men and women to migrate beyond the limitations of their refugee status during the course of their education, unless they were able to find further opportunities, the extent of their mobility both physically and socially was restricted.