Funding Palestinian Identity: How UNRWA’s Donor-Based Funding System Affects Palestinian Identity Processes in Jordanian Refugee Camp Schools

Sammanfattning

The study examines the influence exerted by the UNRWA funding system - largely based on voluntary contributions from donor states - on the negotiation of Palestinian identity within schools located in refugee camps in Jordan. By conducting interviews with eight former students of UNRWA schools in the camps, and integrating the resulting data with field observations and analyses of United Nations documents, the study seeks to identify the spaces within the school environment in which processes of Palestinian identity formation are articulated and negotiated. Drawing on Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony, Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy, and Stuart Hall’s conception of diasporic identity, the study argues that the voluntary donor-based funding system influences Palestinian identity formation primarily within the sphere of formal curricular education. In this context, donor inspection visits, control over school textbooks, and institutionally legitimized representations appear to shape the discursive framing surrounding Palestine. By contrast, informal educational practices and extracurricular student networks emerge as spaces in which Palestinian identity is constructed, debated, and negotiated detached from hegemonic dynamics. The study reflects on the relationship between economic power and education in humanitarian aid contexts and its implications for identity formation within diasporic communities, seeking to offer an original contribution to Middle Eastern Studies in the epistemological and analytical approaches to the Palestinian refugee identity.