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Paper short abstract

In Lagos, Nigeria, middle-class women navigate uncertainty within and after education through multiple strategies. While valuing education for themselves and their children, they rely on privatization, kin and other networks, income diversification, and non-linear life courses.

Paper long abstract

In Lagos, Nigeria, people face various uncertainties ranging from infrastructure to the labor market and the ongoing economic crisis, characterized by high inflation and ever-rising cost of living. In this context, many have high hopes for education, yet the reality often includes problems and obstacles within the system as well as poor prospects for graduates—a contrariness that Cooper, Alber, and Njoya have recently termed "education alibi“ (2025).

My research shows how middle-class women were well aware of the uncertainties and contingencies within and after education. They saw education as key to personal success and upward social mobility for themselves and their children, but did not place blind trust in it. Instead, they employed multiple strategies, which are the subject of this paper: 1) privatization regarding the educational institutions they and their children attended; 2) reliance on and responsibilization of kin and other networks to cover resulting costs; 3) diversification of sources of income during and after education, from formal employment to entrepreneurship; and 4) the non-linearity of their life courses, including intermittent educational paths, also to make their education and careers compatible with motherhood.

For these women, education was an aspiration and a lifelong process. Education, career, and motherhood were all integral parts of their ideal life courses, which required flexible, creative, and diverse strategies to cope with the multiple forms of uncertainty.