Constructions of the 'educated person' in the context of mobility, migration and globalisationThis special issue showcases ethnographies with young people in the Global South which draw on the common conceptual umbrella of the 'identity of the educated person' to unpack novel intersections between mobility, migration and education in the context of globalisation. Overarching themes include how definitions of the educated person are shaped by diverse identity constructions and axes of difference, notions of discipline and hardship, and global discourses and concepts which travel across international space. Definitions of the educated person are contested through migration processes, and young people's agency within and beyond schools, through consumption practices and appropriation of popular culture.
Escaping India's culture of education: Migration desires among aspiring middle-class young menThis paper discusses the relationship between student migration and processes of class formation in the southern Indian state of Kerala, with a particular focus on a group of young men from middle-class backgrounds who desire to migrate to Australia as students. It brings back to life data gathered between 2009 and 2010, the heyday of student migration from India to Australia. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted at a recruitment agency that specializes in sending students to Australia, the article is primarily aimed at deepening our understanding of the motives of young men for seeking to migrate as overseas students within the context of their middle-class lives in India.Current research on Indian overseas student migration to Australia has rightly shown that there is an intricate relation between class formation and migration processes (see, e.g., Baas, 2010b). Yet most of this work has tended to focus on the experiences of students already abroad. Research on the link between the formulation of migration-decisions and class dynamics from the perspective of the sending side that sheds light on how young people's decisions to migrate are produced in complex ways, in relation to individual/familial strategies of mobility and ideas of self-realisation, exploration and development, has been slow to emerge. Osella and Gardner (2003: vi) describe as a 'northern bias' still shaping much research on migration. This refers to the preferential focus on the 'receiving places', the English-speaking north in particular, where diasporic communities and
This gap arguably reflects what
This article examines the relationship between private schooling and the middle classes in urban India. It complicates the argument that private schools have become spaces in which young people come to see themselves less as representatives of one ethnic or caste community and more as indices of their own family's economic standing and as members of a class group. I argue that a closer look at the way in which students experience and narrativise private schooling reveals a much less straightforward process. Schools, I argue, are mobilised by youth as flexible tools in complex and competing strategies to construct a middle social space for themselves. The article seeks to address the lack of research on the complex and severely contested processes of transformation of the selves implicated in strategies of urban educational opportunities.
This paper examines how Indian migrant families in Dubai actively sustain mobile livelihoods across the Indian Ocean and beyond, paying attention to the role played by education in the unfolding of such migrant lives. This paper aims to nuance the experiences of Gulf migrants that have broadly focused on systemic vulnerabilities produced by the legal, economic and social structures encountered in Gulf destinations. This paper builds on the stories of three families from the southern Indian state of Kerala with diverse mobility trajectories over time and space, which is conceptualized in relation to the practice of specific livelihoods, focusing on the patterns and impacts of mobility at different life stages and across generations. Literature engaging with the migration‐education nexus, which reveals that education is an integral part of mobile livelihoods worldwide, provides an analytical backdrop. The paper shows distinct ways in which education forms a crucial part of complex agendas, informing family migration to and from the Gulf region. Furthermore, it captures how migrants’ educational agendas are continuously being adjusted in processes of migration, and how this relates to the ongoing transformation of individual and collective social identities and the remaking of mobile livelihoods.
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