In forced displacement contexts, refugee education is often governed through hybrid arrangements that blend national education systems with humanitarian financing and bordering regimes. While scholarship typically focuses on student enrollment and learning outcomes, less attention has been paid to how education is governed through teachers’ work and compensation. This study integrates and compares data from three interrelated research studies, including a multi-country mixed-methods study, a global donor mapping, and a focused case study of South Sudan. Drawing on teacher interviews and focus groups, along with key informant interviews with donors, UN agencies, and stakeholders, we examine how compensation policies affect teachers’ lives. The findings reveal that differentiated systems produce profound inequities. Refugee teachers are largely excluded from national payrolls and are governed through humanitarian “incentive” schemes that normalize precarity and mask long-term state responsibility. We argue that teacher compensation operates as a mechanism of “policying and policing” within the broader architecture of refugee education governance.
Mendenhall et al. (Fri,) studied this question.