What Kind of Weapon Is Education? Teleological Violence, Local Integration, and Refugee Education in Northern Ethiopia.

The article examines how education affects Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia, focusing on the concept of "teleological violence," which describes the harm caused by the disconnect between educational aspirations and the structural barriers refugees face in achieving progress within host states. Despite increased access to schooling as part of Ethiopia's local integration and migration deterrence policies, refugees often reject or disengage from education because it raises hopes for a future that remains unattainable due to legal and socioeconomic restrictions. Ethnographic research with refugee secondary students, university graduates, and school dropouts reveals that education produces painful awareness of stalled futures, leading many to view irregular migration as the only viable path toward their desired goals. The study highlights a fundamental mismatch between policy-driven teleologies of local integration and refugees' own temporal orientations toward progress and migration.