Entangled navigations

Intergenerational care relations in neoliberal eduscapes in Benin

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2361203
AutoresErdmute Alber (0009-0002-4078-4391, University of Bayreuth, autor de correspondencia)
Año2023
Volumen43
Número4
Páginas365-384
Fecha de publicación2023-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCritique of Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0308-275X • E-ISSN: 1460-3721
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0308275x231216260
OpenAlexW4389450915
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas46

Though often overlooked, parental navigations play an important role in the difficult pathways of rural children through changing eduscapes in northern Benin. Arguing that parents are deeply involved in their children's trajectories towards making a living, I analyse the care and support parents see themselves as responsible for. A neoliberal and increasingly privatized schooling system creating unequal chances in combination with the demand of 'Education for all' responsibilizes parents for their children's success, and a tight labour market makes it additionally difficult for youth to find positions in the urban space. In consequence, parents are more intensively investing in their children's education and related costs than ever before, without feeling that these investments lead to what parents value as success. Due to the lack of parental experience in the neoliberal eduscapes and the lack of cultural and social capitals - parents describe it as 'blindness' - parental actions in the eduscapes could best be described as navigations which are entangled with those of their children. In these navigations, parents give their children what they never received from their own parents, but also expect or hope them to become what they never were. Both parents and children navigate, I argue, towards an unknown and uncertain future in 'radical openness

Economic growth · Economics · Feeling · Openness to experience · Sociology · Value (mathematics · Children's Rights and Participation · Global Educational Policies and Reforms · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare · Psychology · Social Psychology