‘The best of both worlds’: Lagos private schools as engaged strategists of transnational child-raising

Abstract

Schools in migrant-sending contexts often educate many children whose parents live abroad and decide to 'leave' or 'send' their children to be raised 'back home'. Yet there has been little attention to how transnational child-raising is enacted by non-kin actors within educational institutions. This paper addresses this absence, exploring Lagos private schools as crucial sites of care for children with parents in the diaspora. Examining educators' perspectives on schooling children 'sent back' to Nigeria from the UK and USA, the paper argues that they undertake intensive and strategic projects of transnational child-raising. They act as defacto guardians and position their educational offerings as highly moral in ways that draw on endogenous notions of 'training' good character, but are not driven by reproducing tradition. Rather, they play intermediary roles in transnational families: they aim to realise parents' desires for respectful, disciplined children who excel academically, yet are also attuned to young people's struggles. They are conscious of diaspora realities and understand their schools' roles as portals facing both ways in the transnational social field, preparing young people for multiple possible futures. The paper demonstrates that exploring education as a site of social reproduction can be richly revealing of the dynamics of transnationalism.

Starting from Lagos: International schooling and the diverse transnational status‐making projects of ‘Middling’ and ‘Elite’ Nigerians

“…There is a need to further explore this and the ‘more‐than‐class’ dynamics that might shape international schooling. Generally overlooked in work on international schooling, an emerging literature on the practice in migrant families in ‘the west’ who sending their children ‘back home’ for educational sojourns gives us insight into the fact that international education choices are not purely ‘westwards’‐oriented economic calculations but also influenced by cultural, religious and moral concerns and experiences of intersectional inequality (Abotsi, 2019; Abotsi & Hoechner, 2022; Bledsoe & Sow, 2011; Cheung Judge, 2021; Coe & Shani, 2015; Erdal et al., 2016; Hoechner, 2020; Kea & Maier, 2017).…”

“…What is clear is that the way contemporary Nigerians are ‘doing class’ through education is resolutely transnational. In Lagos, Accra and Dakar, growing international school markets are shaped by the remittances, demands and innovations of the transnationally mobile and undertake educational projects oriented to transnational futures (Cheung Judge, 2021; Grysole, 2018; Hoechner, 2020; Kea & Maier, 2017), framed by Abotsi and Hoechner (2022) as ‘Afropolitan’: engaged with established global hierarchies, asserting ‘non‐western’ values and producing ‘worldly Africans’ (see also Spronk, 2014). The relationship between classed status, transnationalism and education begs further exploration: There has been limited attention to transnationalism in work on ‘the African middle classes’ (see Page & Sunjo, 2018 for an exception), and classed dynamics remain underacknowledged in work on African migration (Coe & Pauli, 2020).…”

“…She explained that ideally, she wished for her daughter to ‘study, enjoy, take all the opportunities, invest’ in the United Kingdom but also have a future in Nigeria, given her own experience that ‘you reach a cap ’ working in the United Kingdom. Catering to such parents, elite schools contrasted their approaches with the ‘excessive freedom’ and ‘softness’ of the diaspora, emphasizing their ‘high‐effort, high achievement’ school cultures, and positioning themselves as safer bets than UK schools to ensure academic results and the inculcation of ‘Nigerian values’ of grit and respect (Cheung Judge, 2021), and crucially, a sense of classed confidence:

In Nigeria people are comparatively more resilient. The UK is more accommodating… many of those [families] who keep children back do it to ensure that their children… don't need propping up… are determined, have the attitude to get top grades, work hard, and go to the top universities.

…”

“…These schools also placed a strong emphasis on moral education: fostering ‘the total child’, both academic and of good character: self‐disciplined, honest and respectful of elders (Abotsi, 2019; Cheung Judge, 2021). This was valued in itself but also framed in contrast to elite schools – that mid‐range schools were spaces of ‘proper discipline’ that would best prepare (or correct) children's characters for life in the diaspora:

Parents expect the children to be more disciplined, and they expect them… to face a tougher system.

…”

“…Educators across the schools in this research spoke about the particular challenges of schooling diaspora students, who had sometimes never been to Nigeria and occasionally been ‘tricked’ into their educational sojourns. Educators’ efforts in this area are explored in another paper (Cheung Judge, 2021) but included ‘counselling’ and listening to diaspora students, demonstrating awareness of the social, familial and peer issues they face, and giving them time and leeway to adjust. Thus, another dimension of Lagos schools’ ‘internationalism’ is their competence in dealing with a unique set of transient ‘international students’, something more commonly associated with ‘expatriate‐serving’ international schools.…”