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- Convenors:
-
Hannah Hoechner
(University of East Anglia)
Emma Abotsi (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Joan van Geel (Maastricht University)
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- Stream:
- Identities and Subjectivities
- Location:
- Julian Study Centre 1.03
- Sessions:
- Thursday 5 September, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Transnational families perceive former and/or parental countries of origin as educationally resourceful contexts. Adopting a child- and youth-centric perspective, this panel investigates young people's North-South 'return' mobility for the purpose of education.
Long Abstract:
Transnational families conceive of former and/or parental countries of origin as educationally resourceful contexts. However, the majority of debates have concentrated on South-North mobilities and the impact of migration on education after migrant young people have settled in the Global North. Yet, the empirical reality of young migrants is often characterised by multiple mobilities back-and-forth between their 'host' and 'origin' countries. Transnational families 'send back' children in order to (re-)educate them, to accumulate transnational capital, to instil religious sensibilities, or to discipline. Children are also sent on holidays 'back home' so they become familiar with historical narratives and 'know their roots'. Migrant children and youths also independently undertake these mobilities in the context of their education. We know little about the role of these mobilities in the educational projects of migrant young people.
These mobilities are therefore also absent from our conventional conceptualisations and theorisations of the education of migrant children and youths. This is remarkable since mobility has received significant academic attention and is increasingly framed as 'enriching' the educational projects of students from the Global North. How do the mobility trajectories of migrant young people complicate existing conceptualisations of an 'enriching educational experience' and the role of education in the reproduction of particular national citizens? How do young migrants themselves perceive and experience their mobility? This panel investigates migrant youths' North-South 'return' mobility for the purpose of education. It explores youths' education in a variety of settings and mobilities of various durations from a child- and youth-centric perspective.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 5 September, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
This paper explores notions and experiences of 'discipline' in the educational 'return' of youth from the USA and UK to Nigerian boarding schools. Exploring distinct generational notions of disciplined subjectivities and analysing disciplinary social forces adds to understanding of the practice.
Paper long abstract:
This paper, based on intergenerational research in the Nigerian diaspora, and pilot research in Nigeria, explores the 'return' mobilities of teenagers from the USA and UK to Nigerian boarding schools. This practice reflects transnationally-oriented parenting projects which aim to inculcate dispositions for both high educational attainment in the west and culturally-valued norms such as elder-respect and moral discipline (Coe & Shani, 2015). This paper focuses on notions and experiences of 'discipline' in this practice for parents and youth. A significant number of those sent to Nigeria are young men in 'trouble at school', often 'sent back' involuntarily. This parental 'displacement-as-discipline' sees strict control over young people's bodies as a means to produce desired moral subjects. However, the 'disciplinary parent' must be understood amid the disciplinary western nation-state, responding to immigrant families unforgivingly, and disciplinary educational systems which give few 'second chances' to racialised and classed youth (Bledsoe & Sow, 2011). Thus, educational return can be understood as a strategy to protect chances for social mobility, and as emerging at the juncture where high aspirations of Nigerian parents meet marginalizing forces around gender, race and class in the USA and UK. Young people's perspectives largely resist views of themselves as in need of disciplining, and find 'return' difficult. However, they often rework the experience to express gains of becoming self-disciplined and flexible, which plug into their own high ambitions. Thus, exploring 'discipline' in this practice reveals distinct but shared intergenerational visions for social mobility and the precarious pathway towards it.
Paper short abstract:
The proposed paper addresses the question to what extent can various "Western sites" be considered as educationally resourceful contexts in cases of Hungarian migrant children by examining their educational pathways and reintegration to the Hungarian education system.
Paper long abstract:
The proposed paper addresses the question to what extent can various "Western sites" be considered as educationally resourceful contexts in cases of Hungarian migrant children by examining their educational pathways and reintegration to the Hungarian education system.
In the last decade, Hungary experiences a sharp increase in labour mobility directed towards Western Europe, some of it resulting in return migration (roughly half of the total outbound migration). Care for children of returning families, including their schooling poses various challenges to the families and schools. Learning difficulties of return children, the emotional and psychological challenges they face, gradually emerge as 'a problem' in the education system, asking for new pedagogical approaches and innovative methods. The paper also examines to what extent does the school appreciate and utilize experiences of their pupils from abroad.The proposed paper is based on case studies of two schools located in different geographical locations in Hungary, including a middle-class bilingual elementary school in Budapest and a segregated "Roma school" in a poor region of Eastern Hungary. It focuses on the early experiences and difficulties of educational reintegration of return children, also on discourses and professional practices related to these children. In addition to interviews conducted with teachers and school principals, we have also paid attention to specific child perspectives and narratives of transnational migrant experiences, to 'gains' of mobility and to its 'losses'. It is in our plans to work more with the 'voice of the child' perspective and research method.
Paper short abstract:
This paper investigates students' use of open online learning resources in Dili Timor-Leste. Many study to prepare for scholarship applications to countries such as Australia. Scholarship recipients enact a particular form of structured mobility contingent on their return after graduation.
Paper long abstract:
This paper is a work in progress, part of an ethnographic research project investigating the uses and utility of open online learning for university students in Dili, Timor-Leste. Field work was conducted between 2015 and 2017 with students at the Universidade Nacional Timor Lorosa'e (UNTL), studying English in to apply for coveted international development scholarships to universities in countries such as Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. For many, the educational resources available via the internet present an opportunity to develop the literacies required to achieve their educational aspirations and accrue cultural and social capital. Data were collected via interviews of individual students and small groups, facilitating and observing blended Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and by 'hanging out' around the central campus speaking to students.
The research revealed the students negotiating a set of social structures which both constrain and enable practice- Southern agency- and previous work has begun to outline the defining characteristics of this idea (King, Forsey, & Pegrum, 2019, forthcoming). The motivation to move in order to study suggests a form of mobility underexplored in the literature. Students who are successful in applying for international scholarships are bound by the terms of those scholarships to go back to their country when they have completed their studies. Previous ethnographic studies of education and (im)mobility have drawn focus upon Learning to Labour (Willis, 1977), Learning to Leave (Corbett, 2007) and Learning to Stay (Forsey, 2015). This paper proposes learning to return.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the relationship between 'diasporas' and processes of educational change in their homelands. Drawing on ethnographic research with US-Senegalese children in Senegal and British-Ghanaian children in Ghana, it examines how 'returns' affect educational landscapes and practices.
Paper long abstract:
This proposed paper explores the relationship between 'diasporas' and processes of educational change in their homelands. Most of the existing literature studying this relationship has limited itself to looking at migrant remittances and their role in supporting the education of children 'back home', for instance by paying school fees, or by financing school infrastructures. This means that other dynamics, including those triggered by increasing 'diaspora' demand for 'homeland education', have remained in the dark. A growing body of literature documents how migrant parents in Western countries look to their 'homelands' today for educational solutions as they struggle to bring up their children. Yet, little is known about the experiences of 'sent back' children attending educational institutions in their 'homelands'. This ties in with a broader lack of knowledge about the educational institutions catering to these children and youths. Drawing on ethnographic research on the educational experiences of US-Senegalese children in Senegal and British-Ghanaian children in Ghana, this paper examines the effects of return migration and transnational modes of living on educational landscapes and practices in the 'homeland'. The paper attends to the gap in the literature by asking how education markets in Senegal and Ghana have responded to the specific education demands of their 'diasporas'. What, if any, educational 'entrepreneurs' have responded to this demand and to what effect?