Resilience narratives and their impact on the future and peacebuilding perceptions of young Syrian refugee recipients of education in emergencies social-emotional learning interventions

Abstract

Resilience is considered a central protective mechanism in overcoming war and displacement trauma. Consequently, it is increasingly becoming a concept that the Education in Emergencies community tries to promote through its social emotional learning interventions in conflict-affected areas, including the ongoing Syrian war since 2011. However, there is evidence arguing that such interventions promote neoliberal resilience, which may have negative impacts on the recipient’s future and peacebuilding perceptions. Based on that, this study seeks to investigate how young Syrian refugees understand resilience and how this affects their future and peacebuilding perceptions given they are EiE interventions’ recipients. This study also seeks to explore the degree of compatibility between the participants’ resilience narrative and the EiE neoliberal narrative. Methodologically, 31 participants settling in Lebanon and Iraq participated in this study to execute Q sorting activities and semi-structured interviews. Three main narratives were unpacked: N1) Resilience as a developmental resistance narrative, explaining 38% of the variance; N2)Resilience as a disempowered narrative, explaining 6% of the variance; andN3) Resilience as an apolitical resistance narrative, explaining 4% of the variance. The results show that N1 and N3 understand resilience as resistance, which opposes its neoliberal interpretation. While N1 and N3 agree that their resilience-as-resistance understanding positively affects their personal future, only N1 sees it as an opportunity to enhance their future political habits. N2, on the other hand, sees resilience as a disempowered construct resembling its neoliberal framings, which negatively affects their future whether personal or political. As for peacebuilding, N1 sees it as an organic result of social justice and self-development, N2 sees it only as a result of social justice and N3 does not care how peacebuilding can be achieved. This study concludes that young Syrian refugees’ dominant resilience-as-resistance understanding better constructs their future and peacebuilding perceptions.

Thesis embargoed until 31st January 2027

Date of Award	Jan 2025
Original language	English
Supervisor	Karl O'Connor (Supervisor) & Kelsey Shanks (Supervisor)