This talk introduces Dr. Hiba Salem’s forthcoming monograph, which shares the stories of Syrian young people who have grown up in displacement. Drawing on life story interviews with Syrian refugee youth across nine contexts, the talk explores how they navigate life and aspirations amid hostile immigration policies and arrangements that enforce uncertainty. It reveals the disjuncture between the universal promise of education and the lived realities of displacement, situating their experiences within a dialogue between the fields of education and forced migration studies. By centring young people’s voices and their strategies of hope, their stories highlight the need to reconstruct narratives on forced migration by foregrounding the everyday struggles people face in exercising their universal rights to education, to work, and to build meaningful lives.