http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4374-067X
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ABSTRACT
Education has played a fundamental role shaping Cape Verdean mobilities and recent increases in educational opportunities for poorer sections of the youth population have raised expectations for a better life. Through a discussion of how modern-day education has become a project of self-realisation, the article provides a detailed analysis of a regime of mobility that encouraged Cape Verdeans to study in vocational colleges in Portugal. It illustrates how the protocols signed between local councils in Cape Verde and the colleges created a responsibility vacuum that caused students to slip into illegality, perpetuating the inequalities which the pursuit of education is intended to redress. The ways in which Cape Verdean youth responded – navigating constraints to create the image of a successful life in Portugal against all odds – elucidate how the power of the moral expectation to succeed led them to work the system and to turn secondary education into a stepping stone for their mobility.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
Elizabeth Pilar Challinor http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4374-067X
Notes
1 54.4% of the population is under 25 years old (Instituto Nacional de Estatística Citation2010).
2 Besides the public University of Cape Verde, there are currently at least six private universities in the country.
3 32.1% unemployment rate in 2012 for people under 24 (https://www.ine.pt).
4 Interview conducted November 2012.
5 20.56% in 2013 (http://capeverde.africadata.org/).
6 7.9% in 2014 (https://www.ine.pt).
8 Diário da República n.° Citation166/Citation2009, Série I, Citation2009-Citation08-Citation27.
9 1293 students came to Portugal in the academic year 2009–2010; 1026 in 2010–2011 and 1265 in 2011–2012. (Data obtained during interviews in the Cape Verdean Embassy in Lisbon in 2012.)
10 Excessive alcohol consumption across all social classes and age groups from adolescence onwards constitutes a major public health concern in Cape Verde (http://www.aho.afro.who.int/).