This paper examines the ways in which "Palestine" and "Palestinianess" are culturally, socially and symbolically produced and regulated through formal and non-formal institutional sites in Palestinian camps in south Lebanon. It argues that although institutional power, processes and outcomes help to construct shared notions of "Palestinianess", they also produce contestations and internal "others". Moreover, since Palestinian youth identities are produced inter-textually across multiple civil society institutions, the artificial divide between the school and the community is challenged, the school is decentred as the primary learning site for the construction of youth identities, and notions of "student" and "teacher" are destabilised. This has important implications for how citizenship education is theorised and practised in the contexts of transience, political instability and conflict. (Contains 2 notes.)