Insecurity, transfer-seeking, and compounding stress among refugee and host-community teachers in Kenya: Evidence from Garissa and Turkana Counties

Abstract

Teachers in refugee and conflict-affected settings in Sub-Saharan Africa face acute and persistent insecurity that extends well beyond formal school boundaries. Despite growing recognition that teacher well-being is critical to education quality and retention, the relationship between insecurity and teacher attrition remains under-tested quantitatively in low-resource refugee contexts. This study examines how insecurity — encompassing physical violence, community hostility, armed threat, and adversarial parental relations — relates to teacher attrition risk in refugee camp and host community schools in Kenya. Using a concurrent mixed-methods design, we draw on survey data from 927 teachers across 74 schools in Garissa (Dadaab) and Turkana (Kakuma/Kalobeyei), complemented by 105 qualitative interviews and 11 focus group discussions with teachers, heads of institutions, and policy actors. Quantitative findings reveal that teachers feel less safe in their communities than inside school compounds across all groups studied, with gaps ranging from 5 to 16 percentage points. However, a multilevel logistic regression testing security-related stress, perceived safety, displacement status, gender, and county as predictors of teachers' intention to leave the profession found no statistically significant independent effect, and economic factors — particularly low salary (cited by 76.9% of teachers considering leaving) — emerged as the dominant stated driver of attrition intention. Qualitative data help explain this pattern: rather than leaving teaching altogether, teachers experiencing insecurity more often described seeking internal transfer — at times denied — with resignation emerging as a last resort in a small number of documented cases. We interpret insecurity as a compounding occupational stressor that shapes teachers' mobility and wellbeing within the profession, operating alongside rather than independently of economic precarity. Findings call for dedicated safety reporting mechanisms, community accountability structures, and emergency transfer provisions in fragile education systems, alongside continued attention to compensation as the primary lever for retention.

Keywords: Teacher well-being; insecurity; refugee education; teacher attrition; Kenya; Dadaab; Kakuma; education in emergencies; mixed methods.

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