Abstract
The Sustainable Development Goals and the Leave No One Behind agenda involve a commitment to ensure the participation of persons with disabilities in all aspects of family and community life. This article explores the experiences of Palestinian and Syrian refugee adolescents with disabilities in Jordan in two domains of life: access to education, and their capacity to exercise voice and agency. The findings show that disability intersects with citizenship status and place of residence (camp vs village or city alongside the host community) to reinforce marginality for certain groups of adolescents with disabilities. Across the board, we find low educational aspirations and learning outcomes among adolescents with disabilities, and markedly lower social connectivity—but greater risk of violence by peers. To address these unequal outcomes, we reflect on the importance of developing more inclusive formal and non-formal education services to promote the participation of adolescents with disabilities, and investments in better training and awareness raising for parents, teachers and peers alike.
Highlights
Disability and poverty are linked in a ‘vicious circle’ that has been well established in the extant literature (Yeo and Moore 2003; Braithwaite and Mont 2009; Palmer 2011)
While the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) failed to directly address disadvantages associated with disability, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’ commitment to leave no one behind highlights the need to dismantle structures that reproduce marginalisation of persons with disabilities
A parent of a Syrian adolescent with a disability noted that ‘when we came here to Jordan we found that education is important and you can only get a job if you are educated’—a message that many young people appear to have internalised, as many said they would like to go to university
Summary
Disability and poverty are linked in a ‘vicious circle’ that has been well established in the extant literature (Yeo and Moore 2003; Braithwaite and Mont 2009; Palmer 2011). Because of the stigma around disability in Jordan, families are reluctant to disclose that their children have any impairments, and so for daughters (AlMakhamreh et al 2015). This means disability is often under-reported and inadequately discussed, making it challenging for policy to respond to the needs of young people with disabilities. Gender mediates experiences of marginalisation among refugees with disabilities; in other contexts, research has found that stereotyping and stigma lead to different treatment of boys and girls by those who interact with them in educational settings (Vilchinsky et al 2010; Bešić et al 2020). Despite the many Palestinian and Syrian adolescent refugees with disabilities living in Jordan, and the government’s efforts to make schools more inclusive (both of refugees and learners with disabilities), previous research has not explored the perspectives of young refugees with disabilities in this context
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