Losing or securing futures? Looking beyond ‘proper’ education to decision-making processes about young people’s education in Africa – an introduction

Entangled navigations: Intergenerational care relations in neoliberal eduscapes in Benin

“…They nevertheless imply hustling and checking and, as can be seen with regard to concrete biographies, the constant search in uncertain and changing conditions of openness. This has been called a source of possibility (Martin et al, 2016;Stambach and Hull, 2017;Häberlein and Maurus, 2020).…”

“…His biography demonstrates that the phenomenon of educated unemployment, which had been raised as an issue already after independence (Callaway, 1963), is anything but new. However, it has become a serious and pervasive problem in many countries in Africa following the introduction of neoliberal economics at the end of the 20th century (see Abebe, 2020; Calvés and Schoumaker, 2004; Dawson, 2014; Häberlein and Maurus, 2020; Mains, 2011; Maxwell, 1998; Roth, 1998; Stasik, 2016). As for Issaka, the problem for him was not only the question of how to earn a living and become independent from parental support (Roth, 2008), but also how to build his self-esteem and fulfil ideals of masculinity (Jeffrey et al, 2008; Masquelier, 2013), often expressed in terms of ‘becoming serious’ (Cooper, 2017), and to successfully move into adult roles.…”

“…But contrary to what Jeffrey et al (2008) have stated for India, and others have called ‘waithood’ (Honwana, 2012; Prothman, 2019) or even ‘boredom’ (Masquelier, 2013), Issaka as well as Yarou’s sons and others are constantly engaged in activities that can be described as ‘hustling’, or ‘navigating’ (Christiansen et al, 2006), in a constantly changing environment of open-endedness and contingency (Bledsoe, 2002). This way of actively seeking and building futures under uncertain, open and changing conditions has also been called a source of possibility (Häberlein and Maurus, 2020; Martin et al, 2016; Stambach and Hull, 2017). At the same time, conversations with Issaka and his father also demonstrate that even when hustling and actively seeking possibilities to work in his profession, as Issaka did, and even when creatively navigating how to support his son, as in the case of his father, both described the time of openness as a situation of waiting and a slowed-down process of finding ways to make one’s living after having finished education.…”

Young People’s Aspirations in an Uncertain World: Taking Control of the Future?

“…Africa, in particular, is characterised as perpetually in crisis (Abebe and Ofosu-Kusi, 2016; Weiss, 2004), but global capital is transforming environments and societies everywhere, meaning that children grow up to confront conditions very different from those they are socialised for (Katz, 2004). As numbers of young people in education grow, the proportion who will attain the careers schools have conventionally prepared them for diminishes (Ansell et al, 2020; Häberlein and Maurus, 2020). Formal sector jobs are increasingly scarce, and it is becoming difficult to anticipate the types of work that will dominate the economies of tomorrow.…”