Mobility, education and life trajectories: new and old migratory pathways

Abstract

Travel for educational purposes, once the privilege of the upper class, has become a global mass phenomenon in recent years. This special issue examines, within different cultural and historical contexts, the close relationship between migration, education and social mobility. Adopting the perspective that education includes a broad range of formative experiences, the articles explore different educational trajectories and the local, regional and transnational relations in which they are embedded. Three key issues emerge from the analyses: firstly, the central role of temporality in terms of both the overall historical conditions and the specific biographical circumstances shaping educational opportunities; secondly, the complex agendas informing individuals’ migration and the adjustment of these agendas in the light of the vagaries of migrant life; and thirdly, the importance of migrants’ self-perception as ‘educated persons’ and the invention of new, and the maintaining of old, identities that this involves.

Keywords:

• migration
• social mobility
• mobile livelihoods
• temporality
• education
• anthropology

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karen Fog Olwig

KAREN FOG OLWIG is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at University of Copenhagen

Karen Valentin

KAREN VALENTIN is Associate Professor in the Department of Education at Aarhus University