Embodying “Britishness”: The (re)making of the contemporary Nigerian elite child

Abstract

Existing studies on the role of schooling in the formation and (re)production of elite identity have focused almost entirely on the reproduction strategies of Western elites. Consequently, the distinction strategies employed by non-western elite parents to maintain and/or advance their class positioning – via their children – have remained largely unexamined. Using rare qualitative data from a broader study of the educational preferences of elite Nigerian families, this paper critically examines the key processes involved in Nigerian elites' attempts to protect and/or enhance their children's future elite status. Combining the theoretical frameworks of Bourdieu and Fanon, the paper argues that a significant proportion of elite Nigerian parents opt for UK-based private boarding schools because they believe that these schools will bestow their children with “attributes of excellence” through a highly selective exposure to elite White British lifestyles and practices. These parents believe that placing their children in White (elitist) spaces would allow them to acquire the right dispositions and deportment such as “respectability” and a “refined accent,” essential for the (re)production and/or formation of “genuine” elite identity in modern-day Nigerian.

Keywords:

• Bourdieu
• Fanon
• “Britishness”
• Nigerian elites
• “Whiteness”
• “distinction strategies”

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dr Garth Stahl and the editorial team as well as two anonymous referees for their comment on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Parents’ narratives are permeated by the concepts of Whiteness and Britishness. Interestingly, the data indicate that the parents in this study perceived British and Britishness to be synonymous with English/Englishness. Consequently, they use the term Britishness when in actual fact they mean to imply a degree of Englishness. The fact that all the parents had placed their children in English boarding schools, and made constant reference to the Royal Family as a role model in terms of the type of dispositions and traits they wanted their children to acquire, and were keen for their children to be accent-free, indicate this.

2. Identities are forms of cultural capital that are worked on and embodied by individuals (Skeggs, 2004). Crucially, identity is not “circumscribed by the borders of the nation-state […] or any narrowly defined race or ethnicity” (Dolby, 2000, p.12). Therefore, suggesting that identity is fluid and not fixed. Instead, globalisation and technological advancement have meant that identity can be created from an array of sources. Specifically, individuals with large volumes of economic capital are able to acquire a multiplicity of identities, which in turn enable them easier movement between and across cultural and racial boundaries (Lacy, 2007).

3. It should be noted that Fanon used the term “Blacks” to refer to non-Western or the colonised in general and “White” as a generic term for European civilisations and its representatives or the coloniser.

4. At the time of carrying out the research, it was estimated that there were only 802 Nigerian children in private boarding schools in the UK (Brooks, 2011). This indicated, among other things, that the parents recruited for this study were both a minority and an exclusive group.

5. Pseudonyms are used throughout the paper to protect the parents’ identity.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pere Ayling

Dr Pere Ayling is a lecturer and a researcher in the University Campus Suffolk (UCS), Ipswich. She is a trained sociologist with seven years of teaching experience in HE. Her areas of specialisation include inequality and class (re)production strategies. She is particularly interested in how social class, gender and race intersect to (re)produce 'inequality' in education.