Entangled navigations

Intergenerational care relations in neoliberal eduscapes in Benin

Bibliographic Data

ID2361203
AuthorsErdmute Alber (0009-0002-4078-4391, University of Bayreuth, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume43
Issue4
Pages365-384
Publication date2023-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCritique of Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0308-275X • E-ISSN: 1460-3721
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0308275x231216260
OpenAlexW4389450915
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited46

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