Paper short abstract:

The decision to send children to Nigeria from Britain serves as an act of social positioning and a key feature of the aspirational strategies of a British Nigerian middle class, in which the middle classes are shrinking in Britain and perceived to be growing in parts of Africa.

Paper long abstract:

West Africans have a long history of investing in their children's education by sending them to Britain. Yet, some young British-Nigerians, are being sent to Nigeria for secondary education, going against a long historical grain. The movement of children from London to Nigeria is about the making of good subjects who behave in such a manner as to ensure educational success and (re)produce middle class subjectivities within a context of increasing economic precarity. This movement must be understood within the context of neoliberal globalisation and the emergence of a 'new geography of centrality' in which a matrix of global cities transcends North-South and East-West divides. Further, the continued salience of the Africa rising narrative has encouraged the descendants of Nigerian migrants to the West to return to live in Lagos as repatriates. It is within this context that many first and second-generation Nigerian migrants to Britain are sending their children to be educated in Nigeria. The decision to send children to Nigeria serves as an act of social positioning and a key feature of the aspirational strategies of a British Nigerian middle class, in which the middle classes are shrinking in Britain and perceived to be growing in parts of Africa. Paradoxically, within the context of neoliberal globalisation, British Nigerians now benefit from an elite Nigerian education, the networks this experience gives rise to, and, potentially, the economic power of the Nigerian state, formerly characterised within the Western imaginary as a 'disenchanted space'.