Experiences of (Dis)Unity: Students’ Negotiation of Ethnic and National Identities in Botswana Schools

Abstract

This study examines how students of majority and minority ethnic backgrounds in Botswana understand national identity as inclusive of their ethnic groups. Within assimilationist policies and curriculum, we find that the value of national identity rests on its positioning as a path toward higher levels of education and employment. However, for ethnic minority students, enacting this national identity requires sacrifice of other desired dimensions of a future good life, including ethnic identity.

How Descent‐Based Hierarchies and Youth Culture Shape Secondary School Engagement in Senegal

“…On the African continent particularly, scholars have analyzed how differences based on gender, race, ethnicity or "tribe," nationality, religion, and class have been reproduced or contested within schools (e.g. Dolby 1999;Körling 2020;Mulimbi and Dryden-Peterson 2019;Sano 2019;Stambach and Ngwane 2011). Such studies challenge developmentalist assumptions that schooling is a meritocratic and democratizing force, as EFA reforms have often led to shifts away from inequalities in access to schooling to inequalities in outcomes and labor market integration along existing lines of difference.…”