This study sets out to explore how efforts of social inclusion of Syrian refugees in school settings get interrupted and blocked by social, economic and cultural clashes between Turkish kids and Syrians. Towards this aim, schools were taken as sites for social friction while trying to understand how such friction were transferred from outside the school. While doing this, this study also probes the ways of which teachers, principals and parents negotiate between/across identities and conditions.
There are more than 3.4 million Syrian refugees, of which 1.5 million are school aged kids, living in Turkey. This is the biggest immigration phenomenon happened in such a short time throughout the entire human history. Syrian Refugees and their civic status in Turkey have been highly controversial. The involunteer migration of refugees from their home country could be temporary or permanent. After all, the changes in social fabric lead up to both inclusion and exclusion (He, Bettez & Levin 2017). Social exclusion means conflicts within the society, however social inclusion results in a new social order. Developing social order is possible with providing social inclusion of diverse groups. It can be asserted that social inclusion could be ensured both with policies of government and individual attempts of refugees and natives.
Refugees face several problems through educational processes such as language diversity, insufficiency of economic and cultural resources and frequently exclusion. While schools play a significant role in creating respectful, welcoming environments where holistic approaches to inclusion can be fostered and developed (Keddie 2011; Matthews 2008 cited in Uptin, Wright & Harwood, 2016), according to the latest statistics, 350 thousand migrant kids are still out of school (UNICEF, 2017). The Government of Turkey leads the overall crisis response in-country, and remains the largest provider of aid to Syrians. Nevertheless, Turkey and Turkish education system were not ready for such a huge number of people.
Syrian refugees in Turkey are mostly poor people, immigrated from the northern part of the Syria, the poorest part of the country. When they arrived Turkey, they had almost no money with them whatsoever and were entirely dependent on governmental aids. Only small percent of them (288.384) were able to stay in temporary shelters provided for them while more than 3 million are living outside the government run temporary shelters. Because of extreme poverty condition, their settlement patterns are formed correspondingly. In other words, most of the Syrians settled in rundown parts of the cities where many social, economic, infrastructural and political problems are already big issues. On the other side, where Syrians settled unemployment rates were extremely high and as local people living in those parts of the cities occupied jobs that require no skills at all. Most of the Syrians were also looking for jobs in unskilled labor market (Yıldırımalp, İslamoğlu & İyem, 2017; Çetin, 2016). And, this was the first, if not the biggest, clash between the local people and Syrians. Because, finding a job where unemployment rate is extremely high is not easy task. Syrians, thus, were began to seen as a threat. When Syrian kids were sent to schools, they were together with the kids whose parents are already in aggressive competition to get a job. Turkish families thought that existence of Syrian migrants in their neighborhood violated their rights in both educational and public sphere (Seydi, 2014). Turkish families did not want Syrian kids to attend the same school with their kids, and within their protests distinction and exclusion towards the migrants began to emerge in many parts of the country (Sönmez & Adıgüzel, 2017; Uzun & Özcan, 2017; Topkaya & Akdağ, 2016).
