At What Price? The ‘Terms of Inclusion’ that Mobile Communities Face in Attending School

By CEID Blogger, on 24 October 2024

By Ann Monk,

MA Education and International Development

I step out of the scorching sun into the kindergarten classroom of the Mor Village^[1] school, which is packed with children despite the 45° heat. The wobbly ceiling fan brings little relief, yet their enthusiasm is unwavering as they trace the letters on their alphabet worksheets. I spot Raniya’s father sitting on the floor, a student perched on his lap, and I can’t help but grin. I recall my first week of teaching here, when I met Raniya’s parents during a home visit. Her 14-year-old sister had just been pulled out of school to help with housework and “prepare for marriage.” I asked about Raniya, and her mother replied that she also planned to withdraw her once she reached age 14. Yet today, 16-year-old Raniya is still in school, and her parents not only tolerate her educational aspirations but actively promote them. In fact, her father now helps at the school when it is too hot to work as a mahout.^[2] When I first began teaching the oldest girls at this school, my dream was to “convince” their parents to keep them in school as long as possible. Yet the more time I spent with these families, the more I realized the flaws in my approach.

In the international development community, there is a tendency to assume that low enrollment and attendance rates arise from parents’ ignorance as to the value of education. Thus, the premise is that ‘enlightening’ parents about the benefits of schooling will lead them to prioritize their children’s education. Yet such an approach assumes that formal education is inherently empowering and any reasons for resisting ‘inclusion’ in schools are unfounded and irrational.

Instead, I found it more fruitful to investigate why some parents were hesitant to enroll their children or keep them in school past a certain age. Caroline Dyer (2013) offers a useful analytical framework based on ‘terms of inclusion’, meaning the conditions that families must accept (and the trade-offs they must make) in order to participate in a particular education initiative.

The families in Mor Village saw schooling as beneficial for young children because it also functioned as free childcare. But as children grow older, there are more and more ‘opportunity costs’ associated with schooling. There were no ‘direct costs’ at this school because tuition, books, and uniforms were free. However, there were opportunity costs, meaning opportunities forgone by attending school, such as earning money or helping out in the home. Many parents did not believe the school was teaching relevant and practical skills to improve the lives of students and their families. As a result, they insisted that the older children help support their families rather than continue their education. In other words, a ‘term of inclusion’ for attending school was sacrificing opportunities to support the family in order to obtain an education that did not provide tangible benefits. Clearly, then, the solution was not to ‘convince’ parents that schooling was a worthwhile investment for their children. Instead, we needed to tailor our students’ learning experiences so that schooling was actually worthwhile for them.

For example, rather than requiring students to learn multiplication tables through rote memorization, I started teaching math skills with coins. Not only did students learn more quickly through this hands-on approach, but they could more readily apply their numeracy skills in their everyday lives. None of the parents in the village could count so, when they shopped in the nearby town, they would hold out a handful of coins and hope that the vendor would take only the correct amount. But by learning math in an applied context, the students became adept at quickly calculating sums and counting out the amount owed, ensuring that their parents were no longer overcharged. As parents saw the value of their children’s education increasing, they were more inclined to prioritize their education over other duties because the relevant curriculum made the trade-off for schooling more favorable.

Formal education represented another ‘term of inclusion’ for my students in that the Mor Village school followed a regimented curriculum on an annual cycle and required regular school attendance. This expectation presented a significant challenge for my students. They migrated back and forth, more than 900 kilometers, between Mor Village and a village in another state that did not have a school. Dictated by their fathers’ ability to find work, my students’ movements were unpredictable and often last-minute, and they could be away for just a few weeks or many months at a time. Students struggled to catch up when they returned to school, and those with multiple, prolonged absences were re-enrolled at a lower grade. The latter often dropped out within weeks of their return, due to the stigma associated with being older than their classmates.

It proved a challenge to teach varying levels of learners at the same time. I was determined to help returning students catch up on missed work, but I did not want my teaching to be repetitive for the more advanced students in the class. One strategy I employed was to reduce the amount of instructional time and focus on individual and group activities. This technique promoted greater student engagement and critical thinking than acquisition-based teaching methods, and it also enabled me to provide individualized support to students. Group activities proved particularly successful when I paired recently returned students with those who were further ahead. Not only were the advanced students able to help their peers who had fallen behind, but these students also found that explaining the learning materials helped to deepen their own understanding of the lessons.

Students work in pairs to complete a multiplication worksheet.

A final ‘term of inclusion’ that my students faced was the increasingly Hindu nationalist curriculum. As Muslims, obtaining a formal education required subjecting themselves to Hindutva narratives that framed “all non-Hindu communities in India, but especially the Muslim community, … as separate, second-class citizens” (Lall, 2008, p. 104). The school curriculum has been revised substantially since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party political party came into power in 2014. The revisions omit many references to Islamic historical events and “to downplay the role that Indian Muslims have played in shaping contemporary Indian society” (Lall, 2008, p. 114). By selectively rewriting history, the national curriculum becomes a critical tool for forming national identity and creating an ‘imagined community’.

The role of formal education in (re)producing national identity is a legacy of colonial rule, when schools were used to foster a pro-British political orientation and when “religion [first] emerged as a central factor in political claim-making” (Kadiwal and Jain, 2020, p. 13). With the advent of Hindu nationalism, being Hindu has become the central ‘term of belonging’ to this ‘imagined community’. The ‘other’ is defined as “non-Hindu, with Muslims in particular being excluded from the new national identity of being Indian” (Lall, 2008, p. 105). This example illustrates the potential violence that formal education can inflict, and it highlights the dangers of assuming that schooling is an inherently positive and empowering experience.

For my students, being subjected to these Hindu nationalist discourses was a highly unfavorable trade-off for obtaining a formal education. In an effort to mitigate this ‘term of inclusion’, I developed supplementary teaching materials on Indian Muslim historical figures and events. I also included history and religion lessons from around the world, and I encouraged students to suggest topics that they wanted to learn about. My most successful initiative involved transcribing stories that students told me about their own experiences, such as celebrating religious holidays. The stories were typed, printed, and distributed to my students, who expressed great joy and pride in seeing their own realities reflected in the learning materials.

A student reads a story she helped to write about how her family celebrates Eid al-Adha (an Islamic holiday)

A supplementary worksheet I created for my students about Sikhism, another marginalized religion in India

For students from mobile communities and other marginalized groups, it is crucial to understand the factors that affect enrollment and attendance from the perspective of the students and their families. By considering these issues through the lens of ‘terms of inclusion’, policymakers and educators are better able to address learning barriers and to develop initiatives that offer learning relevant to students’ specific lives and circumstances.

References

Dyer, C. (2013). ‘Does mobility have to mean being hard to reach? Mobile pastoralists and education’s ‘terms of inclusion’’, Compare 43(5), pp. 601-621, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2013.821322

Kadiwal, L. and Jain, M. (2020). ‘Civics and citizenship education in India and Pakistan’, in Sarangapani, P. M., Pappu, R. (Eds.) Handbook of Education Systems in South Asia: Global Education Systems, pp. 1-27, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3309-5_44-1

Lall, M. (2008). ‘Educate to hate: The use of education in the creation of antagonistic national identities in India and Pakistan’, Compare, 38(1), pp. 103-119, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03057920701467834

^[1] All names have been changed for anonymity

^[2] A mahout is an elephant rider, trainer, and caretaker

Was I left behind?

By CEID Blogger, on 24 October 2024

Sent away and left behind

by Xiajuan Wang

I was born in the early 1990s in a small mountainous village in Gansu, northwestern China, which remains one of China’s least developed provinces. I remember people going to sleep, and getting up very early because electricity was not available, let alone modern luxuries such as TV to kill time in the evenings. The road that connected to the town was like a long, but skinny snake zigzagging, only wide enough to take two feet. Every spare inch of soil was used for terraced fields to grow wheat, potatoes, and corn. The only available water source was halfway up the mountain and would run dry on hot days. People were extremely hard working, you could call it a virtue, but it is also because they had no other option if they were to survive.

With the reform and opening up policy in place, structural adjustments were gradually made to improve livelihoods in rural areas. First, the contract responsibility system was adopted to replace collective farming, which made households responsible for the production of land, though it remained publicly owned. Later, the agricultural tax was abolished, which improved family income in general. Still, people only managed to feed themselves, and education, although highly valued in tradition, was a luxury. Only 66% of Chinese adults were literate in 1982 and the majority of the older generations, including my family members, did not go to school at all. By the time I was of school age, the nine-year compulsory education policy was being rolled out nationwide. But school was still costly. However, my parents were able to work and provide for the family as more job opportunities were created in cities during rapid urbanization. Naturally, I was sent to the only school in the village and “left behind” with my grandparents and siblings.

The primary school, a sagging building with nothing but a roof, four walls, and three teachers, was ten minutes’ walk away from home. It had worse material, human, and cultural resources than many other poor village schools. I remember sitting at a desk with crumbled edges and the only equipment for after class activities, a ping-pong table, handmade by villagers with cement, stood outside the classroom. The playground had no equipment so we played with whatever tools we could make for ourselves: balls made with old clothes, elastic bands from the sewing kit, and small stones found on the road. In winter, we kept warm by making a fire at the centre of the classroom with logs we’d brought from home. The Chinese teacher taught us music and the maths teacher was also our PE coach. It sounds hard and it was.

Hold and stay

Yet, I liked being there every day. I loved studying and excelled in all the subjects. I was also passionate about sports and music. I enjoyed every page of the textbooks, which were passed on to me from older schoolmates and were the only books we had. I would always go to school, review the whole book before the term started, and finish all homework after class. I remember reading in the dim light provided by a kerosene lamp and playing ping-pong with a bat that had lost its rubber. I got into high school with the highest grades in my class, which included those from much better backgrounds, and maintained these grade all the way to college. Entry to college was tested through three big entrance exams in which you compete with increasing numbers of students: the junior high school entrance exam with the children in the town, the senior high school entrance exam with students in the whole county and the college entrance exam with young people nationwide.

When I came back from school, my grandma would always wait for me at the crossroad located on the other side of the village, light or dark, warm or cold. At nighttime, I would lie on her legs, while she told me the stories about monsters, goddesses, and ordinary people, with moonlight splashing over us. Her stories became my dreams, shaped my values in life, and expanded my imagination for the future. When I was not studying, I would help with cooking, house chores, and farm work. I learned how to make noodles and dumplings. I managed to do stitches and embroidery. I talked with the birds and butterflies. I counted flower petals and picked berries from the grass. This love for nature, respect for people, and care for animals remain significant parts of who I am today.

The other side

I am not saying that the situation was all good. I suffered from problems such as insufficient nutrition, care, and received a low-quality education. I spent less time with my parents. My hobbies were not properly developed. However, as an individual who was good at school and could not enrol where my parents worked due to limited income and structural restrictions such as the ‘hukou’ or household registration system, parental migration and being left behind was essential and the only way for me to develop my capabilities and discover who I could be through education.

People may say that I was an exception as the first child in the whole county who went to college and adapted to a different life. As I was moving to different schools, my path diverged from that of my peers who were also left behind. Those who did not finish primary school stayed at home to help with farm work. Others who dropped out from middle school followed their parents to work in factories and construction in the cities, suffering from social immobility. Later, many got married and started a new generation who would face a similar situation.

Tied hands

However, would my struggles have been lessened and my peers’ life trajectories changed if our parents had stayed home? It is not easy to answer this question because there are complex decisions with diverse contributors, such as contextual understandings about family responsibilities and the importance of education. I did not know that I was a disadvantaged child, because everyone was trying their best to support my education and I enjoyed living with my grandparents, which was not unusual in Chinese culture. On the other hand, the impact of local social-economic factors cannot be dismissed. Neither children nor parents could have improved the quality and availability of school facilities, learning materials, and teachers, which are the responsibility of policy and social administration. Most importantly, some individuals like me really benefited from parental migration, compared with the worse options we had.

Will and way

I often wonder, what would have happened if my parents had not migrated for work. Considering the lack of financial and social support for education from other sources in that region and even China as a whole, I am certain that I would not have been able to enrol or finish school. Also, knowing that they worked hard in a horrible situation, I wanted a change and education was the only way possible, even if I could not tell this at that time. Through the hardships, I learned how to cope with and solve problems. The resilience and aspiration, along with the poems, equations, and stories, which I gained from the experience of being left behind, got me to where I am today.

Compared with other children from that area, I acquired more freedom and opportunities through education, which is in line with global and neo-liberal standards. After college, I became a highly skilled worker, travelled to different places, and adopted modern values, whereas my peers stayed and held the fort. I am losing connection with my culture and the communication between us is breaking off. When they say that people should be self-reliant, I believe that welfare is mandatory in a society. When they say getting married and having children are the priorities of life, I would argue that living up to my potential is more important. We have different expectations, and we are taking on totally different lifestyles. I am sure I am better off materially and economically, but I cannot say that they have a worse life. One can argue that part of it is due to adaptive preference and the actual freedom to achieve better well-being is reduced for them, yet no one knows. Could they have had their life changed if they’d had expanded opportunities? Are their opinions correct or mine? Am I happier than my fellow villagers? I do not know.

Food, identity and migration in Indo-Caribbean culture

By CEID Blogger, on 24 October 2024

by Annalise Halsall,

MA Education and International Development

In the heat and noise of our family kitchen, I duck into the spice cupboard and inhale. Cumin, turmeric, garam masala, star anise, coriander seeds and cinnamon – the same smell as my Nani’s kitchen more than 3,000 miles away in Toronto, Canada – the same, I like to believe, as her family kitchen was another 5,000 miles away back in 1940s Berbice, Guyana.

I’ve been thinking a lot about identity, and what it means to be “Indo-Caribbean”. It’s a term that people are usually unfamiliar with, and while I can explain the standard “oh, my mum’s parents are from Guyana in the Caribbean and their great-grandparents were originally from India…”, it’s often food that gets the point home.

We eat dhals, and we eat curries, but they are less complex than what you might find in a South Indian restaurant here in London. We have roti, but it’s closer to paratha than South India or Western Indian roti (often to the confusion of South Asian friends that come over for dinner). We eat puri, but we call it bake. Our actual puri is made up of folded layers of dough like our roti, filled with coarsely ground and spiced dhal, and cooked over the high heat of the tawa. We also have rice and peas, and jerk chicken: we fry up plantain, we stew okra, we eat saltfish.

Food is a form of art, of self-expression, of identity. These recipes have been passed down through generations via an oral tradition – an informal education taking place between mother and child, grandparents and grandchildren, aunties and cousins. The tradition also traces us through our migrations and connects us to our home, even as our definition of home shifts from one generation to the next.

The beginnings of the Indo-Caribbean identity were formed when plantation owners sought a new source of cheap labour in the wake of the abolition of slavery across the British Empire in 1833. Their answer was to bring labour from one British colony to another, recruiting indentured workers from the Indian subcontinent to work in the Caribbean for a period of five years in exchange for nothing other than passage, accommodation, food and medical attention. Between 1837 and 1920, over half a million[1] workers were transported from India to the Caribbean. For many, this was the last time they saw their homeland. Only 1 in 4 are thought to have returned to India.

On the crossing from the Indian subcontinent to the Caribbean, indentured workers are written as having travelled while clutching bundles of spices to their chests; protection against the foul smells of the ship, but also a piece of home to take with them – an old comfort for a new exile in a strange land. As they settled in the Caribbean, they were confronted by unfamiliar ingredients alongside the hard labour and poor conditions faced on the plantations. The new tradition of Indian food started in the Caribbean is said to have been “born of poverty and skillful seasoning” (Mackie 1992), creating a practice of adapting the available ingredients, and making the unfamiliar familiar once more.

This triadic relationship between food, identity and migration illustrates a conceptualisation of education as identity formation: a complex process of self-knowledge and internal change. This education goes beyond the passing on of knowledge that takes place formally in schools and other institutions to include the less tangible process of self-making and knowing yourself and the world around you.

The culinary transformation signifies a personal one. In the Indo-Caribbean, food transformed in a time of necessity, as did the women preparing it as they carved out their role as not only feeders of their families, but feeders of their communities too. Indo-Caribbean women have been reforming the kitchen for generations, turning it into a site of creativity and community.

The role of food becomes an external marker of this transformation, as spices – and the security they provided – act as anchors of Indo-Caribbean immigrant history. Food in the Indo-Caribbean context was a symbol of negotiating otherness, demonstrating integration as dishes were shared between groups, yet still resisting assimilation into the dominant colonial British culture. The oral tradition of passing recipes between generations is a conduit for sharing of much more than only the knowledge of food and is an act of cultural resistance and self-expression in itself: “Each recipe serves as an intimate journal entry in which older women are able to concretize their innermost thoughts and feelings … working collaboratively with the younger women to articulate these feelings, under the guise of recipe sharing” (Mehta, 2004).

Food and spices have borne the Indo-Caribbean identity through history to today, but they are also a mechanism for individuals to reach backwards, undergoing our own transformation to gain a better understanding of our families’ past. By tracing these same recipes and methods, even if we need to swap out green mango for the unripe apples that grow in our back garden in the colder UK climate, we reconnect with a part of our identity that sometimes struggles to persist in a context where even the term “Indo-Caribbean” demands an explanation. The commonality of our spices and recipes between generations binds us together despite our vastly different settings – across continents, and across time.

Today, I continue following the oral accounts of my family’s recipes. I temper spices in hot oil: dried red chillies, garlic, and whole cumin, just like my Nani taught me, before adding it to the pot of dhal, already golden from the turmeric.

[1] This figure excludes (1) Indian indentured workers taken to colonies outside of the Caribbean (2) indentured workers brough to the Caribbean who did not originate from India (3) workers indentured under other colonial powers like Spain and the Netherlands.

From Reports to Reality: Peeking Behind the Doors of Development Institutions

By CEID Blogger, on 17 June 2024

By Mathieu Pezeril & Elisa Valentin,

MA Educational Planning, Economics and International Development

“12-year old Emma whining about homework and thinking how she would change Vietnam’s national curriculum to make it less boring (disclaimer: I was objectively very young to be realistic about policy making), the same girl that only saw UNESCO on the news on that tiny telly, wouldn’t believe that one day she’d get to visit the UNESCO headquarters and hear from educational researchers on the projects for girls access to education. So yay!” 

 Emma Linh Do

As the days turn into months, September’s academic drizzle gives way to misty spring mornings, pregnant with research interests. Somewhere along the path, dotting the pages of our MA essays, some names join us as we explore the vast horizons of development evidence literature, familiar IGO silhouettes in the background of our scholarly journeys.

The seed of curiosity had been planted and we felt it was time we – members of the Education, Practice and Society department – took our Education out of the lecture halls directly to its Practice in the larger Society, and got acquainted first-hand with these major stakeholders shaping our field of work and inquiry.

Our group of students from the Educational Planning, Economics and International Development MA programme (EPEID), set out for Paris in the last days of May on a cycle of discussions and visits to large IGOs working on Development and Educational Planning projects. Born out of students’ initiative, the trip met with a welcoming network of institutional staff and IOE alumni, with the generous support of department professors Ben Alcott and Caine Rolleston. Participants aimed at gaining a finer understanding of the inner workings of these institutions at the forefront of policy shaping, and the scope of their mandates, while distinguishing between their individual approaches and gathering insights on the current priorities, rationales and trends in education and development.

“I have always assumed all IGOs to be similar: big institutions, disconnected from what goes on in their countries of operation. I was gladly proven wrong. Not only does each organisation have its own unique culture and atmosphere, but every staff that we spoke to was very passionate and knowledgeable about the work they do and why they do it. It reminded me why I am doing this degree in the first place.” 

 Daline Ly

           Before even thematic engagement, our journey began with experiencing physically each institution as distinct organisms of work and life. Nestled in the calm suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt, OECD took us in at a pace, from one securitized gate to another, to a warm core of hospitable faces in the muted ambiance of slick open office spaces. Just beyond the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, surrounded with flags and 19^th century architecture, laid the grand brutalist halls of the UNESCO Headquarters. We negotiated our way through a ballet of cultural booths, historical cabinets, a library and even a gift shop, as well as art donations from around the world – physical testimonies to both cultural cooperation and power dynamics – before reaching the sprawling office levels, and sipping on an ultimate coffee overlooking the ocean of Paris’ slate roofs, dormers and chimneys. Our circuit ended the next day in a homey building away from large boulevards. Sandwiched between school and historic townhouses, IIEP offered the scents of ubiquitous greenery across its corridors, library and training rooms, and the tranquillity of sector analyses and strategies hatching unpretentiously.

“The trip to Paris to visit OECD, UNESCO and IIEP was a great way to gain an insider’s perspective on the research and work being done at the organisations we have studied. In addition to learning about their programming, research topics, and methodology, we were able to gain insider perspectives on the working environment. It was a wonderful opportunity to meet those doing the day-to-day work to make education more equitable and gender transformative.”

Denise Worth

Sitting back down in the Eurostar, we left Paris with more information than our luggage or brain could hold, but a couple of cross-cutting takeaways stood out:

• Through our conversations at the OECD and UNESCO, both gender teams highlighted the inclusion of a new focus of gender-equitable masculinities in projects. While this topic has been documented and discussed in university and research circles for a number of years, we found it fascinating to witness in real time the bridging role IGOs play in relaying academic advancements, in promoting and operationalising them so they may eventually seep into concrete interventions and receive funding. Internal leveraging and negotiating for innovation, a delicate yet integral part of the game of large international institutions’ decision-making process, may account for the delay, but their weighty and far-reaching voices are almost bound to guarantee large-scale effect.
• The design of indicators equally caught our attention, as tools allowing not only to monitor and evaluate but also to uncover new angles and push evidence-based measures. The work of the various sections led us to reflect on how indexes (such as the SIGI for instance) are created, on the process of translating academic concepts and complex aspects of life into nuanced, relevant, measurable characteristics and trends used by planners and governments. We further contemplated their weight and appropriateness with regards to their role in informing educational planning which in turn feeds back into lives of students and teachers, into schools, in allowing for a trusted contextual understanding, an enriched intervention and policy design, and ultimately a transformative impact.

A few concluding words from the participants:

“It has been the privilege of our EPEID cohort to have such involved class representatives who have brought our experience at UCL to a new level. Learning about international development first-hand from past alumni in their professional contexts has been instrumental to frame what I learn during my masters within the real settings of UN agencies and the wider international scene I intend to collaborate with. A positively constructive experience.”

Luis Zafra Franco

“It was an excellent opportunity to learn outside the classroom and interact with current projects at OCDE, UNESCO and IIEP. Discussing with project leaders of those organisations creates concrete ideas about the working environment, challenges, and roles there. In general, it connects some dots that we have already discussed in class and helps us determine if we, as job seekers, envision working in these big organisations. I appreciate Elisa and Mathieu, our Reps, who organised and led this trip with the support of our professors. I strongly recommend all students of this programme to organise this trip every year.”

Bernardo Pereyra

Demystifying Doctoral Research Fieldwork – “Expecting the Unexpected”

By CEID Blogger, on 12 February 2024

By Vanessa Ozawa

I feel so tired, physically and mentally, I am seriously tired. I dream of the day I finish all these stressful days… November 22, 2022, 18:20, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Field journal

Regardless of the level of planning and preparation, for doctoral scholars with limited resources, notably time and budget, the fieldwork realities can take an emotional toll. However, those struggles are rarely discussed in the increasingly competitive neoliberal academic space. In this blog piece, I reflect on my experiences as a doctoral scholar, to demystify doctoral fieldwork and call for more humane scholarly space, where researchers’ struggles and vulnerability are more empathically recognised as much as their research originality and innovations.

My research explores the educational experiences of Uzbekistani youth and the formation of their national identities. More precisely, it aims to understand how formal educational processes, including their experiences at school environments, shape their national identities through the intersectional lens, accounting for their ethnicity, gender and religion as key national markers. Given the complexity around formations of national identity and cultural diversity in Uzbekistani society, the research adopted an ethnographically informed qualitative approach, involving participant observation, oral history interviews, photo-elicitation and focus group discussions with Uzbekistani youth, mainly enrolled at public universities in Tashkent, aged from 18 to 20, who had just completed their compulsory school education and whose memories of schools were still relatively fresh. In my mind, my fieldwork plan was impeccable at that time, however, once I started my fieldwork, it did not take too long before my confidence was quickly disenchanted. Notwithstanding that, I had gained several prior fieldwork experiences in Uzbekistan both as a Masters student at UCL Institute of Education and then as a development practitioner associated with an international agency, which had enabled me to appreciate the unpredictable nature of fieldwork and its “messiness”. However, challenges I faced for my fieldwork as a doctoral student this time were beyond my expectations that I could have fathomed with my prior experiences.

The dichotomous understanding of researcher’s positionality as insider or outsider often disregards researchers’ complex identities and the messiness of the research setting. More importantly, the power dimensions in social relations in research contexts, and researcher’s positionalities need to be understood as situational, reciprocal, and fluid. For me, as an international researcher, conducting the study in a non-native setting triggered a myriad of methodological, conceptual, ethical and logistical difficulties and dilemmas. Whilst any researcher would inevitably experience difficulties unique to each context, foreign and local scholars face divergent advantages and disadvantages during fieldwork due to their different or similar cultural and social obligations, expectations and familiarity with the research context. Once I was exposed to the realities of the fieldwork, for the first time, I truly understood the meaning of a “research proposal”, which had made through the viva stage. As the fieldwork began, I realised that I was better prepared for methodological hurdles than for the practical difficulties. Throughout my four-month long fieldwork in Uzbekistan, I kept a daily digital journal, a personal space where I could candidly reveal my thoughts, reflections, and emotions. Among those, the most recurrent topics included the struggles to recruit an interpreter and participants and how to retain them. The repeated failure to even find a reliable interpreter and loss of initial few weeks in this process led to concerns about completing the fieldwork within the timeframe. The recruitment of participants was also delayed as I had to completely rely on gatekeepers and employ a snowball sampling method. Moreover, the selected participants often canceled meetings at the last minute or dropped out altogether after a couple meetings, a common struggle in an ethnographic study with youth, causing huge stress at times. This was coupled by the anxiety of exceeding my budget for fieldwork. As soon as I started working with my interpreter, who not only helped me navigate social and cultural complexities but also introduced me to some participants, I was finally able to regain my excitement and enthusiasm though my concerns, struggles and frustrations continued. What I learnt from this phase of ordeal was the importance of flexibility, patience, resilience and persistence when plans fail, and one has to adapt to the unpredicted situation in the field.

Whilst these were not the only hurdles I encountered during my fieldwork, and all researchers are likely to get tormented by similar issues, being a non-resident foreigner, female and basic speaker of the languages of the research context amplified my challenges. I also did not have the luxury to extend my stay beyond the four-month period due to limited finances which were all consumed in international flights, interpreter’s salary, accommodation, gifts for gatekeepers and bills for occasional restaurant and café with my participants. It was also the time when there was an influx of Russians in Uzbekistan to avoid Russian government’s “partial mobilization” policy to involve in the Ukrainian conflict. This meant that accommodation rents in Tashkent suddenly skyrocketed. My hostel unexpectedly decided to raise accommodation charges, which I had to dispute with the hostel manager. I almost had to sign a new lease for an apartment outside Tashkent through random people I had met on the day of crisis. Even though I agreed to a renegotiated price, I needed to borrow cash from my local acquittances since the hostel accepted payment only with local bank cards or cash which I did not have. Although these incidents might seem private logistical matters and not academic enough to be considered within the scholarly discussions, these were very much part of my fieldwork which were simply underrealised during the pre-fieldwork phase. After a few months in the field, I was simply exhausted, realising how underprepared I was for these practical eventualities and my “readiness” for the fieldwork was simply not good enough.

Now, that I have completed my fieldwork and am approaching the final stage of my doctoral journey, I sometimes get asked what my advice would be for those who are preparing for fieldwork. I always answer with the phrase – “expecting the unexpected”. Whilst the quote seems obvious, we often tend to forget it in the research planning processes as mostly, the focus is on scholarly debates on theories, methodologies, ethics and methods. For most doctoral students, the approved research proposal, for which we spend months and years, acts upon our mind like the ultimate guidebook for fieldwork until one faces the chaos of the fieldwork adventures. Nevertheless, although often not discussed enough, the bumpy realities of fieldwork are a path that no one can avoid; it is an integral part of research, which mentally and emotionally affects the researcher and research processes, exacerbating the adverse effects of already isolating doctoral journey. Although all scholarly work is usually built upon unspoken hardships of the scholars, there are rarely any spaces to reveal and share the personal stories of hurdles and struggles. What is expected of early career researchers is their display of flawless intellectual capacities and high-quality research approaches and findings, within the competitive neoliberal space of the higher education community. However, the realities of fieldwork, particularly in social sciences and education research, are never “neutral nor hygienic”, as it is embedded “within networks of power”, inevitably eliciting a range of “unexpected”, influencing and altering research processes.

Hence, academic space needs to be more open to humanistic debates where scholars, especially early career researchers, can safely share their personal experiences relating to their fieldwork without fear of being judged and labelled as “incompetent”. As education researchers, we should embrace the messiness of human interactions and our own vulnerabilities thus, the experiences of the fieldwork. Otherwise, how can we advocate and mobilise for a just society as a scholarly community?

Vanessa Ozawa (vanessa.ozawa@nu.edu.kz) is a doctoral scholar at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan.

A Call for Peace with Justice in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel – recognising the pivotal role of education

By CEID Blogger, on 6 November 2023

By Elaine Unterhalter, Tejendra Pherali, Laila Kadiwal and Colleen Howell

NOTE: This opinion piece presents the personal views of the authors and is not a statement by CEID (Centre for Education and International Development)

For comments or further information, please get in touch with Professor Tejendra Pherali (T.Pherali@ucl.ac.uk)

The people living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel are facing a cataclysm,  with horrific murders, hostage taking, devastating bombing over several weeks, mass displacements, and significant shortages of food, water and medical supplies. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that Saturday, 21 October, marked the fifteenth day in Gaza of no access to education and safe places for more than 625 000 students and 22 564 teachers, with significant destruction of education infrastructure that has taken years to put in place and will take years to rebuild. Fear of a destructive regional war with devastating consequences is widespread. Meanwhile, there has been a sharp rise in Antisemitic and Islamophobic assaults around the world, including in the UK. This blog aims to bring some insights from our work in the Centre for Education and International Development (CEID), where we are linked to many individuals and networks engulfed by these events, to reflect on the implications for education of this appalling tragedy and to think about how educational processes could have potential to help formulate a different response that does not add more violence and terrible loss.

CEID is a research and teaching centre with a long history of involvement with education in low- and middle-income countries, and it has developed a body of scholarship in the field of education conflict and peace-building. From our experience with this work, we set out three themes relevant to building peace with justice. These are firstly, acknowledging the history that has created the conditions for the tragedy to unfold; secondly, taking seriously the role of education linked with structured forms of redress.  Thirdly, we reflect on how scholarship in a field like education and international development can support building connections across many divisions and differently located communities.

Our analysis stems from  our research on conflicts and education in Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Africa, Tajikistan and Thailand. These studies highlight how, in these very different contexts, peace-making is a process that requires in-depth reflection, sustained examination of the processes that generate anger between groups, and particular kinds of actions – sometimes symbolic and sometimes material – that can look forward to moments of forgiveness. The absence of direct violence is  not sufficient in itself to sustain peace because it does not address the root causes of conflict. To lessen conflict, and move towards a just peace, long-term policies are needed to address structural violence, which may be institutionalised through land seizures or extraction of natural resources, leading to dispossession and deepening inequalities, especially for indigenous communities. Divisive employment policies or education practices can reproduce intersecting inequalities. Achieving sustainable peace requires structural measures such as addressing the grievances of the marginalised and oppressed, redressing inequalities and building fairness in policy and practice in areas such as schooling, health or housing. This rests on supporting rights to self-determination, democratic participation and decision-making.

These processes require leadership that acknowledges historical injustices and is committed to social, economic and political transformation. Acknowledging painful histories and the different ways the anguish is borne by different communities has to form part of this process. In turn, while education can be part of the process of seeking to repair conflicts, it can also be deployed to exacerbate tension and hatred. A particular form of educative process is needed to animate contributions to thinking about memory, justice, peacebuilding and forgiveness. In the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel, and throughout the whole region, the scars of terrible wars and dispossessions have persisted over generations. The horrific events of the last three weeks have been hugely shaped by this history. But history is not destiny. Looking at all its pain, mistakes, and failures is a way to learn and attempt to build something new.

Education, which virtually everywhere is unequally distributed and of uneven quality, can be used to repress cultures, manipulate histories, glorify violence, portray diversity negatively, justify land grabs, and impose dominance. But education can also be a vehicle for fostering creative social and political innovations that can rescue societies from the trap of retributive violence. It can help develop a more critical understanding of complex histories and enable people to exercise their agency against the influence of manipulative ideologies and propaganda. A critically reflective education can support  the valuing of diversity and the need to think about sustainability. It provides opportunities for redress and affirmative action to counter discrimination and injustices and contribute to combatting prejudices and stereotypes. Forms of education can heal and contribute towards forgiveness and reconciliation. Our course on Education, Conflict and Peace, gets students to engage with research which shows that a key part of peace-making entails processes that enable an examination of the root causes of violent conflict, which may be shaped by contrasting discourses, for differently located participants. Participatory approaches can help think about repair or reparations and the educational processes to support this.

Our third theme in this post relates to our field of enquiry. Education and International Development is a very malleable area in which some of the pressures of contemporary processes very quickly form areas of investigation, challenges to orthodoxies, and translations into practice. But for many of us over these last weeks, these scholarly pathways have been marked by shock, grief, silence and fear, as our concerns with education constantly raise the issue of children whose lives are being devastated by this conflict. Our hope is that we can draw on some of our store of knowledge with a sense of the responsibility our experience brings, and we do not turn away from the anguish of what is being suffered. We need to be attentive in all our teaching, research, collegial and community engagements to try to bridge the misunderstandings and address wilfully curated hatred, deepen understandings and think about how to offer support and solidarity for processes that lead to a just peace.

Any just peace for Palestine and Israel needs to start not with weapons of war but needs to entail educational processes of listening, reaching to understand, seeking not to do more harm or validate violence, but instead cultivate sensibilities for global justice, to affirm our moral bonds as fellow vulnerable humans on this fragile earth.

The perfect immigration policy? ‘Educate’ children of migrants to pull up the drawbridge

By CEID Blogger, on 4 October 2023

By Yousef Abdul Atti

Imagine you are sitting at home one day, inside a plot of land within the borders of the country you call home. The country where all your friends, your family, your memories lie. It is not really a flag, an anthem, it may not be a language, however there is a soul within the place you call home. But the inability to provide for your family’s economic needs is eating you up, the very same land that you call home, that is supposed to be a source of provision for you, is working against you. The lands that you once tended to with your very own hands, where you constructed your house, grew your garden, played with your friends are simply another tool in the arsenal of the unjust to oppress you. Your freedoms and those of your loved ones are slowly vanishing before your eyes. What do you do? You have no choice. You must leave the place that houses all your memories. You must embark on a difficult journey to find a new home.

If you are a migrant, a refugee, an asylum seeker, or a forcibly displaced person, you do not have to imagine. You live this reality. If you are Syrian, Venezuelan, Afghan, South Sudanese, or Burmese, countries from where 70% of the world’s forcibly displaced persons originate, chances are you do not have to imagine. Perhaps not all of your countrymen and women are migrants or displaced. Some may have become naturalized citizens in their host countries, providing for their families, helping their host communities, schooling their children. Others may even have ‘friends in high places’ or have reached those high places themselves. If you required their assistance, wouldn’t you expect your fellow nationals to understand? As migrants, should we not go together if we want to go far? Although it may seem too much to ask for assistance from others, wouldn’t you expect for them to at least not stand in your way, not be the reason why you cannot seek out a better future for you and your family?

The father of Sammy Mahdi was a political refugee from Iraq who was granted asylum in Belgium as he fled prosecution from the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein. His son, Mahdi, a ‘born-and-bred Brusselaar’ became, on October 1, 2020, the Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration. Calling himself ‘Barack Obama’, one of his first announced goals in office was to increase the percentage of deportations from Belgium; the 2020 figure of 18%, in Mahdi’s opinion, was too low in comparison to Germany’s 35%. In the wake of the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul in August 2021, six EU countries, including Belgium, cautioned against blocking deportations of Afghan asylum seekers. Out of the six countries, it was Mahdi who shored up the EU initiative against criticism by stating, ‘that regions of a country are not safe does not mean that each national of that country automatically is entitled to protection.’

It is no surprise that at the start of his posting, accusations surfaced that Mahdi was specifically targeting Iraqi refugees, prompting the Iraqi Minister of Immigration and Displacement to invite the Belgian ambassador for talks regarding the matter. What is interesting is that Mahdi invokes his migratory background in political speeches proclaiming that ‘migration always is emotion’ and he asserts that his father’s journey affected everyone, his family, his community, and even Iraq and Belgium.

So how come someone from a disadvantaged background ends up perpetuating the same structures that cause those disadvantages? Mahdi answers by affirming that he only wants to ‘represent…the Belgian community…based on a shared cultural background.’ He makes sure to note that he does not want to be another ‘Token Ali’. It is not entirely clear how Mahdi interprets this so-called shared cultural background.   Mahdi’s own education was directed and constructed in a specific manner. His father refused to teach him Arabic, and, according to Mahdi, raised him up to be anti-communitarian. Yet Mahdi apparently aligns himself with the same humanist values as his alma mater, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUD), where he regularly shares his insights on migration, diversity and integration through social projects and guest speaking.

VUD is also the alma mater of the current prime minister of Belgium. Other alumni include Zuhal Demir, the daughter of Turkish migrants and former chair of integration in the Flemish government, and now the current  European Vice-President of climate; and Nadia Sminate, a Moroccan-Belgian and current member of the Belgian chamber of representatives, the Secretary of the Flemish Parliament, and the Mayor of Londerzeel. Sminate, who celebrated the dismantlement of Unia, a Belgian public institution ‘that fights discrimination and promotes equal opportunities’. She is a keen advocate for ‘Dutch integration’, saying ‘I see far too often people here who are given rights, but too little see the need to set obligations in return’ because they do not speak Dutch. However, what is most telling with regard to how just one educational institution, VUD, constructs the ‘desirable migrant’ is how Demir & Sminate, despite their ‘culturally alien’ origins, have now become authorities on the mentorship of migrants in their constituencies, creating more obstacles and removing opportunities for them. In fact, Sminate was the chair for the Resolution of the Radicalization Committee in 2021, which produced a proposal that was approved by Demir, who was Minister of Justice and Enforcement in the Flemish Government at the time.

Mahdi’s understanding of education appears to exert great influence on his policies. He notes that the difference in performance between students with and without an immigrant background in Belgium is one of the largest in the world, yet he comes to the conclusion that the solution is to educate all the citizens.

On 14 June 2022, The Brussels Labour Court found Mahdi guilty of violating the asylum seekers’ right to reception.

Mahdi’s response to the court order

On 27 June 2022 he was forced to step down as Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration in the Belgian Cabinet. Not because of his indictment by the Belgian Court, but because he was elected as president of the CD&V party, the same party that graduated the majority of prime ministers of Belgium and to which the first full president of the European Council belonged.

As these cases show, when done effectively, the education system can construct the desirable migrant subject, who in turn acts as a gatekeeper to other aspiring ‘desirables’.

Learning the history, identity, and education of Tibetans-in-exile through Tibetan Terms

By CEID Blogger, on 4 October 2023

By Esme Anderson

‘Free Tibet’ has been a prevalent refrain internationally for decades. But what does it mean? What has been done to help preserve Tibet since that first image of a burning monk? Given that the movement is centred among exiles in Dharamshala in northern India, it gives rise to questions about who ‘true’ Tibetans are, how education constructs the ideal Tibetan, and how education can exclude those who don’t fit that description.

As I myself am a language educator, this blog attempts to answer these questions through the teaching of key Tibetan words.

“Rangzen” རང་བཙན

 Meaning: Roughly translates to “self-power” or independence

Pronunciation

Images of burning monks have long become associated with the international image of Tibet. But is the battlecry of “Rangzen” as well known?  “Rangzen” translates as ‘self-power’ or ‘independence’ – a call for self-determination that has emerged under China’s rule.

Prior to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) taking power in 1949, Tibet was an independent state. It was feudal and traditionally Buddhist, with the Dalai Lama as the state leader. But tensions with the CCP were evident as early as 1935, when Mao Zedong, the CCP leader, and his followers set off on their ‘Long March’ to rally support in rural regions. They ate the sacred and intricate butter buddhas that sat in Tibetan temples, angering and upsetting Tibetans. When the CCP took control of Tibet in 1949, the Dalai Lama was under threat given Mao’s beliefs that religion “poisons” countries and slows development. A recreation of this conversation, informed by the Dalai Lama, can be found here.

Following a crackdown on religious freedoms, protests erupted in 1959 and CCP troops were sent in. The Dalai Lama managed to flee to Dharamshala, which translates as “sacred dwelling place”. From here, the exile government has sought to preserve and keep sacred cultural heritage alive as less and less of the traditional Tibet remains.

A pivotal way in which this is done is through education. Unlike in other places that house asylum seekers or refugees, the Dalai Lama and Indian Governor of Dharamshala came to an agreement for a specialized educational policy for Tibetans. Children learn modern subjects alongside Buddhist teachings such as Yungdrung and Buddhadharma and principles such as freedom, altruism, and upholding heritage. Uniquely and importantly, they learn Standardized Tibetan (spoken in Lhasa, the Capital) in addition to Hindi and English. By stark contrast, back in Tibet itself, the final school teaching Tibetan changed its medium of instruction to Chinese in 2020.

Although the likelihood of achieving “rangzen” back in Tibet is becoming smaller and smaller, its cries are still echoed in Dharamshala as Tibetans-in-exile fight for their culture to preserve and survive.

“Nangpa” ནང་པ་

Meaning: Buddhist; Buddhist “insider”

Pronunciation

Nangpa on its own simply means ‘Buddhist’ and is also the name of a sacred Buddhist pilgrimage site. When discussing ‘Tibetans-in-exile’, calling someone a ‘Nangpa’ means that the speaker believes that they are truly ‘Tibetan’. Interestingly, this does not connote someone’s religious values, practices, or activities. Being Nangpa means someone who is free of Chinese influence and who speaks Central or Standard Tibetan.

“Ramalug” ར་དང་ལུག་གཉིས་ཀ་མེད།

Meaning: Neither goat nor sheep

Pronunciation unavailable (colloquial term)

This Tibetan term is a metaphor for someone being a ‘hybrid’ and therefore not a real ‘nangpa’ and is used for newer arrivals from Tibet who have been exposed to Chinese language, modernity and influence. Such arrivals may be met with scepticism and suspicion, as shown in Yeh’s (2007) study, which followed Tenzin, who was raised in Tibet before migrating to America. His occasional refusal to be in group photos, combined with his time under perceived Chinese influence, led him to be viewed as a possible spy and dubbed a “ramalug”. An older Tibetan-in-exile felt that Tenzin could benefit from spending more time in ‘real’ Tibet. This perspective creates contradictions and complications for recent Tibetan migrants who have increasingly fled due to structural inequalities that place them at the bottom of society in Tibet.

The discriminatory treatment of recent arrivals into  Dharamshala is reflected in educational policies. The Basic Educational Policy for Tibetans was last updated in 2006, and in 2017 Tibetan researcher Nawang Phuntsog reported that textbooks had not been updated for over a decade. If Tibet itself had free and open communication, this might be less of an issue because there would be other sources for updating recent history and events in Tibet. However, it is increasingly difficult to leave Tibet, with one blogger noting “Getting a passport is harder for a Tibetan than getting into heaven”. Parents send their children to the Tibetan Children’s Village in Dharamshala without knowing when they will next see them. Strict censorship also means that there aren’t the real-time digital communication chains that can be found in other diasporas and migrant communities. The educational policy calls for empowering students to “uphold their ancestral cultural heritage”. But lived experiences and understandings of modern Tibet, or Tibet under Chinese rule, have been excluded from the curriculum, and therefore its students may be too.

 “Kacha” काछा

Meaning: Raw

Pronunciation

A Hindi term which translates into ‘raw’, ‘Kacha’ is used by ‘Nangpa’ to refer to Tibetan migrants from outside of Central Tibet. There are up to 52 dialects that still exist in Tibet. But these languages are not being preserved or saved overseas and are becoming gradually extinct in Tibet.

Since the education policy calls for teaching ‘mother tongue’ Tibetan, i.e. Lhasa Tibetan, there is little acknowledgement of other regional dialects. The Basic Educational Policy  was intended to overhaul the curriculum away from monastic education and resolve previous inequities in monastic education in Tibet. However, it excludes other dialects and therefore their speakers from being recognised as true Tibetans.

“Ma ‘ongs pa” མ་འོངས་པ

Meaning: Future

Pronunciation

Future is an imperative idea for Buddhists and Tibetans-in-exile. The idea of dwelling on the past, no matter how painful, is not often promoted. Living in Dharamshala, preserving Tibetan language and heritage through education are all future-facing ideas in the hopes of ‘rangzen’, or at the very least, cultural survival.

But there are other opportunities for movements towards an educationally just ‘ma ‘ongs pa’ as this short language lesson has hopefully demonstrated. Here are some suggestions as to how this could be done:

• Although adding other languages could overload students, an appreciation for different dialects should at least be acknowledged. There could be pathways by which new Tibetans-in-exile learn or teach in their native dialects in addition to learning Standard Tibetan, which would help preserve at risk histories, languages, and heritages.
• Undoubtedly, promoting Chinese in Dharamshala schools could recreate harmful power structures and is antithetical to a government in exile constructed against the CCP. However, updating the curriculum to include recent events from Tibet could help legitimize recent migrants’ experience, trauma, and conceptions of home.
• Ria Kapoor’s podcast on ‘Creating Refugee Archives’ could also prove a valuable learning and teaching tool for the government in exile and for schools.

Through such measures, the voices of recent migrants could be amplified to make them feel heard, respected, and valued. Importantly tolerance, a key value to the Dalai Lama, can be promoted through education.

The Elephant in the (Class)room

By CEID Blogger, on 4 October 2023

By Rebecca Greenway

‘Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom’ (2019) is an Oscar nominated film set in the remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. On the surface, it is a beautiful piece of cinema with authentic acting, stunning scenery and a hauntingly beautiful soundtrack but it also raises questions about schooling, migration and notions of development.

The film follows Ugyen, a talented singer and young teacher who is drafted to Lunana, a hamlet located eight days walk away from Thimpou, where he lives with his grandmother. An urbanite, Ugyen is reluctant to relinquish his dream of migrating to Australia to become a star. As he sheds his leather jacket and his iPod runs out of charge, layers of globalization are peeled back and he is confronted with the rites, customs and traditions of his heritage, all of which he considers parochial and backwards. The primary school he has been sent to is synonymous with many rural, remote schools with no blackboard, electricity, running water, pens or paper. Western audiences might hark for this ‘simpler’ way of life, as the humble authenticity of the villagers undoubtedly add to the charm of the film. However, the film refuses to fall into the trap of portraying a rural idyll without exploring the challenges of teaching and living in such a remote place. Collecting yak dung to stoke a fire and gathering the harvest before the onset of winter are entwined in the fabric of their existence. The forced closure of the school during the winter months reminds the viewer that the community is deeply connected to the environment and dependent on seasonal changes. The bucolic pastoralism that might have been portrayed is replaced with the realities of alcoholism, youth unemployment and hard to reach communities becoming forgotten and left behind. All of which presents a bittersweet rurality.

The happiness myth? 

Bhutan is renowned for embracing the ‘Gross National Happiness’ (GNH) development model, as the viewer is aptly reminded in the opening scene, with the words ‘Gross National Happiness’ written on the back of Ugyen’s t-shirt. Attracting interest from the world stage, Bhutan has captured the imagination of many as a kingdom which ensures the well-being of the citizens who live in harmony with their pristine environment. The GNH model rests on four pillars: good governance, sustainable socio-economic development, the preservation and promotion of culture and environmental conservation. There are nine key domains, measured through 33 indicators. They include ambitious targets of providing electricity and education for all. Furthermore, an inclusive approach to recognising diverse learning needs is made explicit in the Educational Blueprint, demonstrating a step away from homogenizing education systems.

As a result of significant progress made in reducing poverty and sustaining economic growth, Bhutan is set to graduate from the least developed country (LDC) list in 2023. However, scratching beneath the surface cracks emerge. Despite efforts to provide vocational training and entrepreneurship, youth unemployment is high. An overreliance on hydroelectric power to stimulate economic growth and lack of investment in diversifying the private sector equate to limited job prospects. Pull factors, such as seeking employment overseas are witnessed in the steep rise of outward migration. This leads to a false dichotomy where the older generation Bhutanese might naively question why anyone would want to leave ‘the happiest country on earth?’

The grass is always greener 

Imagined futures, opposed to static realities, are features of migration. This is captured throughout the film, as a sense of belonging and longing for something else, is in constant flux. Longing for his grandmother’s cooking is symbolized through the wooden bowl Ugyen eats out of upon his arrival in Lunana. As he dreams of migrating to Australia, he clings on earnestly to the pamphlet showing pictures of Sydney Opera house. Ironically, the pamphlet symbolically loses its original significance as he scribbles the lyrics to a traditional folk song on the back. Each time he moves, he leaves something or someone behind. Finally, once he arrives in Australia, the reality of working in a dingy bar, singing commercial songs during a noisy happy hour is a far cry from his imagined future of becoming a famous singer. Just as Ugyen’s physical journey exposes him to diverse settings, cultures and people, his intrinsic values and ideas evolve. The juxtaposing final shot of Bondi Beach to the bar where Ugyen is being paid to sing background music shows the trappings of a commodified vision of Western success.

Just as the audience is left wondering what Ugyen’s future holds, we are also left pondering the fate of the Lunana villagers and the educational provision of the children without a teacher. The way of life for rural communities is under threat. Glacial melt due to rising temperatures leads to landslides, contributing to further isolation. Pastoralists that rely on seasonal predictability will be forced to confront the challenges of climate change. Future investment in infrastructure through the development of roads will allow better access to schools and yet will engender changes to a rural way of life. Bhutan already contends with increasing rural to urban internal migration as people seek employment opportunities, access to quality education and healthcare. The challenges of safeguarding the basic needs for all are complex and manifold. This tightrope of harnessing equitable, ethical growth that respects the planetary boundaries and ensures the wellbeing for all is an ongoing challenge.

Schooling without teaching? 

‘Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom’ is above all a film about development, globalization, modernity, migration and the teaching crisis. Ugyen is symbolic of a youth disenchanted with the idea of being a teacher. Retention, recruitment and attrition rates reflect this trend globally. Although there is consensus that teaching is a valuable and honourable profession that ‘touches the future,’ the teacher gap cannot be filled without societal transformation.

As a teacher, I hope for a revalorisation of the profession through improved pay and working conditions, ongoing support and professional development. However, I am also aware that there is no silver bullet to the acute teacher shortage. Country and local contexts cannot be ignored and neither can other realities, often financial, such as the large proportion of education budgets which are required for teacher salaries. Finally, measures such as fast-track recruitment programmes might fill an urgent need for bodies in the classroom but they do not address the systemic shift required to upgrade educational systems. After all, when it comes down to it, “every education system is only as good as the teachers who provide hands -on schooling.”

Migration exhibits as sites of learning: Refugees: Forced to flee.

By CEID Blogger, on 4 October 2023

 Imperial War Museum, London

By Isabella Hogg 

When you think about migration what do you picture? Every migrant’s story is different and museums can aid in the telling of these stories while providing places of inclusion for those who migrate. Many museums host exhibits detailing the different experiences of migrants. New Land, New Hope exhibit in the Migration Museum in Adelaide, for example, shows how refugees express their experiences through interviews. Other exhibits, such as the Keepsake exhibit in the Migration Museum in London, show the stories of migration through object biography, which is the history and interactions that the objects have experienced. One exhibit that has included sound, art and object biography is the Refugees: Forced to Flee exhibit in the Imperial War Museum in London, which ran from 2020-2021. The central aim of this exhibit was to provide first-person narratives detailing migratory  experiences.

Historically, many museums have adopted a Eurocentric approach to the display of artefacts. One of the first recorded museums was Lorenzo de Medici’s gem collection in Florence. Here the main objective was to store objects rather than provide a public space of learning. The first museum that was opened to the public was the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, which was established in 1683, with the aim of providing a space to expand people’s knowledge on topics such as the natural world and allow people to enjoy the collection. Changing the museum environment to a space which was open to the public transformed the nature of the museum from a space of storage to a place of learning. However, this was often to the detriment of those who had been colonised; many of the artefacts that were displayed were either looted or forced from colonies. The 19^th century saw many empires compete in the acquisition of artefacts as a means of displaying wealth and power, with little understanding of the meanings and cultural significance of the artefacts that were acquired. Many museums today hope to correct the mistakes of the past. Migration museums that are centred around the voices of migrants themselves can be considered examples of postcolonial spaces of learning, as they seek to address the exclusion of knowledges from the Global South and the Eurocentric portrayal of the cultures and life of people from those countries.

An accompanying exhibition to the Refugees: Forced to Flee exhibit provided visitors with immersive film of refugee camps within Greece, with the intention of showing the lived realities of refugees living there. When people were asked their feelings about what they had seen, they stated it was moving and humanising, a sharp contrast to media portrayals of refugees which often mask the reality of everyday experiences within the camps and contribute to refugee feelings of exclusion. In reference to Syrian refugees, for example, the media was seen to display them in three contrasting ways: as dangerous and a burden to society, as helpless and in need of aid, and through humanising stories with the intention of gaining empathy. These different depictions of refugees can contribute to the formation of stereotypes based on western views. Museum exhibits such as Refugees: Forced to Flee can  help counter over simplified western constructions of refugees.

The exhibit has also utilised art and music and the creation of soundscapes to provide more immersive experiences, which can aid in the learning process and help form emotional connections. Other museums have used similar methods to engage visitors, including the Paris-Londre Music Migrations exhibition in Musée de l’Histoire de l’Immigration in Paris, which explored the power that music held in providing migrants with a voice and the ability to make their mark on the culture and society within Paris and London.

Exhibits that are based on collaborations with refugees and migrants also construct environments that can elicit feelings of self-reflection among visitors, who may relate personally to the stories that are told. One such experience was recorded by Briony Fleming who felt a connection to the We Are Movers exhibition in The Migration Museum in London. While walking through the exhibit she was reminded of her experience of migrating from Ireland to England and the sense of fear of the unknown that existed at the time. When such connections are formed it can aid in the understanding of other people’s experiences.

The Imperial War Museum collaborated with the British Red Cross to bring the Refugees: Forced to Flee exhibition to life. The display of objects that were distributed to refugees within camps around the world, including tinned food and hygiene products, along with plaques detailing their significance allowed for the stories of these items to be told to the visitors. However, as the objects were provided by the Red Cross, rather than by migrants or refugees themselves, they may not be an accurate representation of what was provided to each refugee within the camps and may only tell a partial story.

The Refugees: Forced to Flee exhibition can be seen as offering a new learning environment for visitors. The accompanying film exhibition offered an alternative learning experience for those who value immersive activities as engaging and thought provoking. By utilising a postcolonial lens within the museum environment, the voices of those who are often misrepresented or unheard can be projected more authentically to an audience, allowing their stories to be told; for museums to truly have a postcolonial perspective it is important that these voices are not censored or overlooked.