Voices quiet, bodies still: embodied governance of refugee learners through social and emotional learning

Abstract

This article examines social and emotional learning (SEL) in Education in Emergencies through critical embodiment theory. Drawing on interviews, ethnographic research, documentary materials, and six widely used EiE-SEL programmes, I trace recurring practices of bodily preparedness, impulse control, and emotional regulation. I argue that these practices reveal how humanitarian and educational governance can operate through the body by encouraging learners to regulate conduct, emotion, and expression. I develop a distinct conceptualisation of the embodiment of displacement to describe how institutional expectations attached to displaced status may become bodily enacted, negotiated, adapted, or resisted.