Education in Conflict and Crisis : The case of Kurdish refugees from Syria in Turkey

Underpinned by Pierre Bourdieu and Abdelmalek Sayad’s sociological theories and Erving Goffman’s theory of social stigma, this study bridges the ideas of these three sociologists by examining the relationship of capital owning, stigma, migration and the strategies immigrant families build towards education around these notions. With the aim of exploring the role of education for refugee immigrants, the research area has been restricted to a specific city in the South-East of Turkey. The city, Diyarbakir, has been deliberately chosen for this study in terms of the value it holds for the immigrant group examined. As a method, interviews have been conducted in Diyarbakir with the aim of constructing a qualitative study. The data, in the form of interviews, used in this study has been collected within one month, which took place in November 2017. With the conducted interviews and the theoretical framework shaped, the immigrants are discussed through their assets, the conversion of different types of capital within the country of immigration, the recognized values deriving from similar ethnic identity shared with the majority in the city of immigration and the strategies they build towards the education system in Turkey. The scope of this study covers the school-aged children from any level, including students in higher education. Families’ perception of education plays a crucial role in their children’s education path as they build certain strategies towards it. Accordingly, this study explores how the Syrian immigrants in Turkey perceive education in relation to their different types of capital or lack of them. By doing so, the study concludes that the perception of the families in relation to their cultural capital and encountered stigma divides the social group explored through three main categorizes, namely the pragmatic, oblivious and resistant approaches they take towards the education system in Turkey. The study also argues that immigrant children’s education in Turkey acts as an impeding condition for their parents’ return to the country of origin