This article examines the subjectivity of refugee women regarding education while in a state of prolonged “transit” in squalid conditions and within a context of limited agency. Specifically, we discuss the experience of forced migration and displacement of refugee Afghan women through a focus on processes of education in the context of their “temporary” accommodation in the former Elliniko camp in Athens. Through ethnographic fieldwork in the framework of Project PRESS, which was funded by the Hellenic Open University, the study presents how gender in the context of encampment and mobility affects the refugees’ participation in non-formal educational programs. The article proposes that for groups of individuals who have been “refugees” for long periods of their lives or were born “refugees,” informal or non-formal educational activities may become a vehicle of mobility in the transit condition. Through such activities, gendered claims can be made and intergenerational and other hierarchical relationships within the family and community can be renegotiated, as in the case of young women in the former Elliniko Camp.

DOI: 10.1007/s12134-019-00712-w
ISSN: 1488-3473