Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the problem of “deskilling” in Ethiopia: how young people learn skills from schools that are inappropriate for non-formal employment; and how they start to engage in informal livelihood strategies that require network and capital which are scarce in today’s political economy.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on fieldwork in Ethiopia, this paper explores the hopes and aspirations of young people and the possibilities that formal education holds for improving their life chances. It highlights how academic knowledge is being privileged over local knowledge, and the implications of eroding ecologies of "local ways of doing things" for earning sustainable livelihoods. In Ethiopia, the hope that education is the pathway to success is constrained not only by lack of access to quality education but also by the social and moral economy that accentuates young people's interdependent livelihoods with family collectives. Many young people in Ethiopia cannot find jobs due to the growth in absolute number of high school graduates, but largely as a result of shrinking formal job market. The paper reveals the phenomenon of deskilling, that is, the disjunctions between what young people learn and what they are likely to need for their world of adulthood (Katz, 2004). Deskilling is the byproduct of, and manifested in, political economic strictures that alter trajectories in traditional pathways en route to adulthood. Young Ethiopians acquire agricultural skills but have no land to farm; they attend formal schools only long enough to learn skills that are inappropriate for non-formal employment; or they may start to engage in informal livelihood strategies that require skills, network and capital which are scarce in today's economic landscape.