Professor Jo Boyden, Director of the Young Lives study, was invited by the CESS-UNICEF Division for Child Studies and the Director of the Centre for Economic and Social Studies in Hyderabad to give a Distinguished Guest Lecture on 24 Septebmer 2014.

1. Modernity, Mobility and the Reshaping of
Childhood in the Twenty-first Century:
Educational Aspirations and Challenges
Professor Jo Boyden, Director, Young Lives
Distinguished Guest Lecture
CESS-UNICEF Division for Child Studies, Hyderabad
24 September 2014

2. • PART I: CHILDHOOD AND MODERNITY
THE PROMISE
THE POLICY APPROACHES
• PART II: YOUNG LIVES EVIDENCE
TRADITIONAL NORMS AROUND CHILDREN’S
ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
EDUCATIONAL ASPIRATIONS
• PART III: THE EDUCATION-MIGRATION NEXUS
• REFLECTIONS
OUTLINE

3. CHILDHOOD AND MODERNITY

4. THE PROMISE OF MODERNITY
• The promise to children:
– UN Convention on the Rights of the Child puts the
spotlight on children
– Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University:
“We view healthy child development as the foundation of economic
prosperity, strong communities, and a just society, and our mission is to
advance that vision by using science to enhance child well-being through
innovations in policy and practice.”
• The promise of education:
– World Bank Group Education Strategy 2020:
“Simply put, investments in quality education lead to more rapid and
sustainable economic growth and development. Educated individuals are
more employable, able to earn higher wages, cope better with economic
shocks, and raise healthier children.”

5. INTERNATIONAL POLICY ON SCHOOL EDUCATION
• School education is understood as a social good and a
child right (UN CRC)
• Push for education through Education for All (Learning
for All) and the Millennium Development Goals
• Systems expansion, especially at the primary level
• Creating demand through advocacy, compulsory
schooling and incentives

6. POLICY ON INDEPENDENT CHILD MIGRATION
• School systems require sedentary populations
• At the same time, children are thought to depend wholly
on adults. So it is believed that:
• For children to flourish, they need to be raised through
continuous parental care
• Physical proximity with parents is vital for children’s
well-being
• Children moving away from the family home without
adult family members are in effect trafficked
• So independent child migration is viewed as a major risk
for children

7. YOUNG LIVES EVIDENCE

8. YOUNG LIVES RESEARCH DESIGN
• Interdisciplinary, mixed-methods, cohort study that is
researching the determinants and outcomes of childhood
poverty – to influence policy
• Following 12,000 children in Ethiopia, India (Andhra Pradesh
& Telangana), Peru, Vietnam, over 15 years
• Two age groups in each country:
- 2,000 children born in 2000-01
- 1,000 children born in 1994-95
• Pro-poor sample: 80 sites across the 4 countries selected to
reflect country diversity, rural-urban, livelihoods, ethnic,
religious differences; roughly equal numbers of boys and girls
• Data: children, selected siblings, caregivers (households),
communities and schools (selected)

9. TRADITIONAL NORMS ON CHILDREN’S ROLES AND
RESPONSIBILITIES
• Household poverty and frequent exposure to shocks of many kinds
influences children’s roles, responsibilities and choices
• Households rely on children working in accordance with their gender,
age, birth order and capacity
• Children express a strong sense of responsibility towards their
families
• Children’s work is not just an economic asset but also a crucial
context for learning important social values and life skills
• Children are not simply dependent on but interdependent with adults

10. ETHIOPIA
• Hard work is an indicator of a ‘good child’: facilitating the
development of reasoning, empathy and responsibility
• Mashresha (aged 13, the third of 7 children). His mother
said:
“His knowledge is improving.… He keeps the livestock,
cares for his younger siblings, the crop…. He has
realized the importance of keeping cattle, caring for
children…”
Why does he think like that?
“Because he knows that if he becomes careless, we
become poor, then we may be forced to have our
children in labour. …Yes, he is getting mature and he
knows how much we are suffering for them.”

11. IN ETHIOPIA SCHOOL AND WORK
ARE INTERCONNECTED
Most children combine school and work well into their teens – some work to
pay school costs
Minaya (aged 13): Minaya’s parents are dead and she lives alone with her
grandmother.
• She is keen to help her grandmother: “I am supporting my grandmother
alone but my children might have a better life by having parents who can
support each other.”
• She studies hard and sees this as part of her duty to her grandmother:
“Since my grandmother is working hard to send me to school, I also have to
work hard to get a better result”.
• She is doing well at school and has high hopes for the future: “...when I
complete my education I will have a job to support myself and my
grandmother and my life will be better [than my parents’ lives]”.
• If children do well at school, they can reciprocate later in life

12. NORMS AROUND CHILD RELOCATION
• Children provide for the labour needs and personal care of elderly
relatives and others, who in turn give them guidance and training
• Moving between households can facilitate this mutuality between
generations within extended families/across households:
• e.g. a teenage boy in Vietnam was sent to live with his uncle and
work in his shop in return for support and disciplining to aid his
schooling
• Gender differences in migration: e.g. India
• Boys more than girls articulate a commitment to supporting
parents in old age: pressure to migrate for work & remit income
• Migration of girls at early marriage, when they begin to contribute
to the household of their in-laws

13. YOUNG LIVES EVIDENCE ON
EDUCTIONAL ASPIRATIONS

14. BROAD EDUCATION TRENDS
Primary school enrolment is now near universal across our sample in India,
Peru and Vietnam. But the systems have many weaknesses:
• In Ethiopia, school quality is poor, many children start late and do not
progress well
• In Peru, children with less educated mothers and/or who speak an
indigenous language are more likely to attend primary schools with fewer
services or poorer infrastructure, to repeat grades and to have poorer
results in achievement tests by age 8
• In India, early school-leaving rates for children from Scheduled Caste and
Scheduled Tribe groups are almost double the rate for Other Caste groups
• In Vietnam, Older Cohort children, poor children, rural children, ethnic
minority children and those whose parents had little or no education are
most likely to leave school early

15. ASPIRATIONS FOR SOCIAL MOBILITY ARE
In Peru:
ASSOCIATED WITH EDUCATION
• Rural life is strongly associated with suffering and hardship:
“We’re not going to suffer like this in the mud… it’s better
that I go and study.” (Marta, rural Andahuaylas)
• Caregivers struggle to give their children the best chances in life:
Esmeralda’s mother said:
“I feel proud mami, I suffer… I brought my children into
this world, I will ensure they study” (Her husband drinks
and she works hard, selling cows to pay for her children’s
education. Her two sons study in town, but money is short so
Esmeralda attends the village school)

16. EDUCATIONAL ASPIRATIONS ARE EXTREMELY HIGH
More than half of parents of 8-year-olds in Ethiopia, Peru and Vietnam
wanted their child to complete university
In Peru:
• Education is the way out of suffering:
– Nicolas’ mother explained: “I tell him to: ‘study son, it’s for you,
what’s of the chacra (field) stays chacra, your studies, no one can
take them away…’”
– Eva plans to use education to get away from the land: She is
adamant that the skills she has acquired at work will not be useful in
the future: “I am not going to be a peasant (campesina).” She hopes
to go to Lima to study nursing.
• Education is essential to ‘becoming somebody’:
– Becoming a professional; defending oneself

17. THE EDUCATION-MIGRATION NEXUS

18. MIGRATION INCENTIVES AND EDUCATION
• Vietnam and Ethiopia actively discourage migration:
– Without permission to move from local authorities, migrants lose
rights to services, school access etc.
– This leads to family separation as individual members go in search of
work
• Vietnam:
– Education system is relatively even in resources and performance
across the country
– Educational aspirations met by extra tuition - supplements schooling
– Little incentive for children to relocate in search of better schools
• Ethiopia:
• Primary enrolment rising but limited numbers of secondary schools in
rural areas
– Some children move in with relatives in town
– Children with unschooled parents often make their own choices to
relocate for school, this changing inter-generational relations

19. MIGRATION INCENTIVES AND EDUCATION
Education policy in some countries actively encourages school
movement
India:
• Relocation and boarding in hostels is essential for continued school
access among tribal children
• Elite boarding schools a colonial heritage
• Gradual expansion of private education with growth of ‘low-fee’
private schools offering English language as medium of instruction,
together with loss of confidence in the state system:
• Dual enrolment
• Children shifting between schools, private and government,
some often
• Some children shift school because of poor quality food, ill-treatment
• Will this process encourage child relocation?

20. MIGRATION FOR EDUCATION IS
RESHAPING CHILDHOOD
E.g. in India changing gender norms in some contexts:
• Traditionally, girls from the Jathapa tribe in Patna didn’t go outside the
home alone after puberty because of the reputational risks.
• Today many move access schools outside the village and live in hostels,
providing them with new freedoms. Santhi (age 12) explained:
“[I]f one remains at home all the time it may not be possible to know
anything about the outside world. So I want to go out … We will
know about the views of different people …One ought to know about
the world outside. So, I want to join a hostel and know much more
… I feel I might be able to live.”

21. MIGRATION CAN ALSO DESTROY
EDUCATION HOPES
• In the Peruvian highlands, Atilio didn’t finished secondary school and has
left for Lima with his girlfriend. His mother has not seen him for some
time.
• She believes that her son’s chances in life are ruined and that he will
end up back in the village working in the fields: “all his life he will
suffer in the fields.”
• She feels he has broken an explicit agreement: “He said to me, ‘I’m not
going to be like everyone else, I am going to study…perhaps to be an
engineer.’ It seems I put him [into secondary school] just for the sake of
it.”

22. REFLECTIONS

23. THE MISCONCEPTIONS
• Children’s effective socialisation and development rely on them growing
up as dependents in residentially-fixed households/ nuclear families
• Children and unschooled adults don’t value education or care about its
effectiveness or relevance or the reputation and performance of
individual schools
• Because education has intrinsic worth it should not be the subject of cost-benefit
calculations
• Quality and relevance of school education can wait until enrolment and
access are resolved
• School is a free good that replaces work in children’s lives
• Schooling is the prime vehicle for good jobs

24. • In many places children are interdependent with adults, their work
valued for the economic contribution it makes and skills it imparts
• At the same time, adults and children are convinced of the value of
education
• Children often combine school and work
• Relocation within the extended family and independent child
migration, whether for school or work, are common in many parts of
the world
• High educational aspirations together with disparities in school
systems by location and social group is a significant new incentive
for child relocation:
– And many children migrate for jobs so that they can cover school
expenses
– But how can parents and children be expected to know which are
the best school choices?
– Are the tremendous sacrifices worth it when good jobs are so
scarce?
THE REALITY

25. MODERNITY AND CHILDHOOD
• Parents and children have bought into the agenda of modernity even
though the associated systems and structures are not well developed
• The international community has taken a strong stand against both child
work and independent child migration and in favour of education
• But is this position realistic for children living in poverty, especially given
the marketisation of education and rise in educational aspirations?
• The post-2015 debate has been focusing on inequalities, but school
education exacerbates this problem – how does relocation and migration
for schooling affect this trend?
• Children today are under inordinate pressure to excel at school and fulfil
familial responsibilities; how does this affect their well-being and inter-generational
relations?

26. REFERENCES
• Jo Boyden (2013) ‘“We’re not going to suffer like this in the mud”: Educational Aspirations,
Social Mobility and Independent Child Migration among Populations Living in Poverty’,
Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education 43.5: 580-600.
• Gina Crivello (2011) ‘“Becoming somebody”: Youth Transitions through Education and
Migration in Peru’, Journal of Youth Studies, 14.4: 395-411.
• M. Dobson (2009) ‘Unpacking Children in Migration Research’, Children’s Geographies 7.3
• Karin Heissler and Catherine Porter (2013) ‘“Know Your Place”: Ethiopian Children’s
Contributions to the Household Economy’, European Journal of Development Research.
• Zoe James and Martin Woodhead (2013) ‘Choosing and Changing Schools in India’s Private
and Government Sectors’, Oxford Review of Education 40.1: 73-90.
• Virginia Morrow (2010) ‘Should the World really be Free of “Child Labour”? Some
Reflections’, Childhood 17.4: 4.
• Kirrily Pells (2011) Poverty and Gender Inequalities: Evidence from Young Lives, Young Lives
Policy Paper 3.
• G. Porter, K. Hampshire, A. Abane, A. Tanle, K. Esia-Donkoh, R. Obilie Amoako-Sakyi, S.
Agblorti and S. Asiedu Owusu (2011) ‘Mobility, Education and Livelihood Trajectories for
Young People in Rural Ghana: A Gender Perspective’, Children’s Geographies 9.3-4: 395–410.
• Uma Vennam (2012) ‘Protecting Diversity or Mainstreaming: Schooling Experiences of Tribal
Children in Andhra Pradesh, India’, Paper given at the Centre for the Study of Childhood and
Youth 4th International Conference on ‘Celebrating Childhood Diversity’, University of
Sheffield, 9-11 July 2012.