The three Rs: Parental risk management strategies in the International Secondary Education Market

ABSTRACT

Risk permeates all aspects of modern life, and the International Secondary Education Market (ISEM) is no exception. Drawing on empirical data, this paper considers a specific type of risk: namely, the potential loss of cultural identity, which Nigerian parents associate with educating their children in the West. This paper argues that Nigerian families employ three key risk management strategies (the Right time; the Right country; and the Right school – or the 3Rs) in their attempt to mitigate and/or avoid this perceived risk. Adopting a broadly socio-cultural analysis of risk, the paper argues that parents’ understanding of risk as well as the type of risk management strategy they use are shaped by socio-cultural factors such as religion, gender, and social class. Data from the study indicate that cultural and religious beliefs influence which of their children parents choose to invest in, and in which country they chose to educate them, as certain bodies are rendered more “risky” and in need of closer monitoring.

KEYWORDS:

• Risk
• risk management strategies
• ISEM
• Nigerian parents
• culture
• Western liberalism

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Erratum

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Garth Stahl, the editors and the reviewers for their constructive comments om earlier drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The idea that education is a commodity and thus strategized and interacted with like any other commodity by those that provide or consume it has been long established (e.g. Cucchiara, 2008; Symes, 1998). Importantly, private education has been described as a “positional goods” (Adnett & Davies, 2002). A positional good is “a product, which because of its scarcity, helps to mark people's relatively higher social position” (Bowe et al., 1994, p. 44).

2. International schools are Western private schools (so-called because of the employment of mostly white head-teachers, the use of Western curriculum and pedagogical approaches) both in Western (Brooks & Waters, 2015) and non-Western societies (Ayling, 2015a).

3. Parents use the terms “Africanness” and “Nigerianness” interchangeably. Both terms are used to refer to the acquisition of cultural values, norms and practices that are perceived by parents as specific to traditional African societies. Crucially, parents believe that the acquisition of these so-called African values and norms, which includes but not limited to, an absolute reverence for one's culture and parents is integral to the formation of an African/Nigerian identity. Therefore, when parents talk about their children losing their supposed Africanness or Nigerianness, they are essentially referring to a child that has no connection to their African heritage and have lost their African/Nigerian identity.

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Notes on contributors

Pere Ayling

Pere Ayling has over seven years of teaching experience in primary, secondary and now, tertiary education sectors. Her areas of specialization include consumption, elite education and (in)equality. In her recent study, she critically examines the consumption of British private schooling by the Nigerian elite parents. Her research, which is framed within the sociology of consumption and education, draws heavily on Bourdieu's work on distinction and Fanon's colonization theory. The study investigates how race and class intersect and influence parents’ country and school choice in the transnational education market.