Education in perpetual motion: education, conflict, and the migration decision-making of Syrian young people in Lebanon

Education is an important factor that both forces and guides refugees’ decision-making about their migrations. In this article, we explore the complex interplay between education, migration, and conflict. To do so, we bring together multiple research projects to analyze 121 interviews that we conducted with 88 participants: 15 Syrian refugee students and 73 Syrian and Lebanese teachers of refugees. We examine how Syrian refugee students and teachers experience and explain migration decisions and the connection between those decisions and their views of and experiences with education and with conflict. We analyze how teachers and students understand and experience the structures and content of schooling and show how these structures and content interact with conflict and migration dynamics. We find that these educational experiences both shape and are shaped by their experiences with conflict, their visions for the future, and their migration decision-making.