Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the relationship between education, migration and social mobility, with a focus on rural Indian youths' aspirations for elsewhere.

Paper long abstract:

Over the past couple of decades, young people in rural India have witnessed the emergence of a powerful institution, namely education, that is opening up opportunities and avenues for migration outside of rural areas. Regarded as a form of 'mobility capital', education serves as a 'link to elsewhere', loosening ties to kin and community and creating possibilities for a different kind of future. As previous scholars have acknowledged, this 'mobility imperative' is connected to wider discourses of modernity and development, and has come to pervade young people's aspirations for formal participation in non-agricultural employment, located in a (usually) urban-based labour market.

This paper is concerned with the relationship between education and young people's mobility orientations, and the uncertainties and ambiguities that underpin this relationship. Based on longterm ethnographic research in a mixed Hindu/Christian adivasi (tribal) village in rural India, the paper explores the different conditions and constraints that impact upon young people's willingness to invest in education. It argues that the divergent ways that young people engage with this discourse, which sees aspirations for mobility outside of the village pitted against a desire to avoid the economic uncertainties and loneliness of urban anonymity, are underscored by deep-rooted ambivalence about the value and potential returns of education. This, in turn, is inextricably linked to the historical relationship that young people, and their families, have with land, labour and livelihood practices. In the course of this analysis, attention is paid to the way in which different structural constraints (economic status, gender, ethno-religious identity) underpin and mediate this discourse.