David Sancho

In this chapter, I focus on the cultural terms through which a group of young Indian middle-class friends experienced well-being and sought to give their lives a sense of quality in the context of migration to the Arab Gulf. I draw on an understanding of migration as an undetermined process, driven by a variety of motivations, in which new forms of sociality, subjectivities, and belonging may emerge, and that these may, in turn, transform people’s migratory experiences and trajectories. The ethnographic evidence I present below speaks of the emergence of an Indian youth culture centred on the nurturing of particularly intense forms of friendship. In turn, I examine how these friendship bonds support and facilitate the development of alternative experiences of self-realisation, and forms identity and belonging, which reshaped my respondents’ sense of well-being. In particular, I examine how my interlocutors narrate a shift from a notion of well-being based on hard work, frugality, and the achievement of long-term objectives, to a notion of well-being based on developing a group history and the enjoyment of intimate friendships in the present.

By examining the transformation of Kochi, a South Indian cosmopolitan metropolis, through the lens of education, this book discusses the role of private schooling in the (re)production of inequalities within the spectrum of the middle classes. Set in globalising India, the book presents a city and its school sector in flux, with aspirations and efforts to transform Kochi into a hub of global trade, tourism, and cosmopolitan lifestyles, and a rival to established South Indian metropolises running high.

Delving below the cosmopolitan and neoliberal character imagined to be taking hold of its inhabitants, the book demonstrates how changes of schooling practices and models respond not only to a changing understanding of educational needs in a time of globalisation, but are also instrumental to longstanding projects of class, religion and caste distinction particular to the region and to India. While central attention is paid to schools as sites of social and cultural reproduction, the book moves towards a more nuanced analysis of the ways in which youth, in their final years of their schooling careers, and their families experience and appropriate schooling, shaping its meaning according to their aspirations of social and geographical mobility and their apprehensions of the ‘globalising’ present.

Moving away from the pervasive consumption-centric discourse that has infused debates about becoming and being middle-class in India, to the idea of ‘competence’ as a broader analytical notion, the book places education at the centre of contemporary debates on what it means to be middle class by acknowledging how it continues to mediate access to successful middle-class status, and by providing a more accurate representation of the importance of a successful engagement with the globalised economy.

This paper examines how Indian migrant families in Dubai actively sustain mobile livelihoods across the Indian Ocean and beyond, paying attention to the role played by education in the unfolding of such migrant lives. This paper aims to nuance the experiences of Gulf migrants that have broadly focused on systemic vulnerabilities produced by the legal, economic and social structures encountered in Gulf destinations. This paper builds on the stories of three families from the southern Indian state of Kerala with diverse mobility trajectories over time and space, which is conceptualized in relation to the practice of specific livelihoods, focusing on the patterns and impacts of mobility at different life stages and across generations. Literature engaging with the migration-education nexus, which reveals that education is an integral part of mobile livelihoods worldwide, provides an analytical backdrop. The paper shows distinct ways in which education forms a crucial part of complex agendas, informing family migration to and from the Gulf region. Furthermore, it captures how migrants’ educational agendas are continuously being adjusted in processes of migration, and how this relates to the ongoing transformation of individual and collective social identities and the remaking of mobile livelihoods.

This paper explores the life experiences, identities and trajectories of young Dubai-born Indians living in the Arab Gulf. It seeks to contribute to an emergent body of research on the formation of diasporic identities and forms of belonging among South Asians in the Gulf, which underscores the ways in which migrants articulate forms of cultural belonging in a context where they are denied the right to citizenship. Building on the notion of the‘educated person’, the paper argues that education constitutes an important, yet overlooked, basis for forms of cultural belonging in Dubai.

This special issue showcases ethnographies with young people in the
Global South which draw on the common conceptual umbrella of the
‘identity of the educated person’ to unpack novel intersections between
mobility, migration and education in the context of globalisation.
Overarching themes include how definitions of the educated person are
shaped by diverse identity constructions and axes of difference, notions
of discipline and hardship, and global discourses and concepts which
travel across international space. Definitions of the educated person are
contested through migration processes, and young people’s agency
within and beyond schools, through consumption practices and
appropriation of popular culture.

Research on Indian overseas students in Australia has shown that there is an intricate connection between class and migration processes. Yet most of this work has focused on the experiences of students already abroad. Research on the formulation of migration-decisions and class dynamics from the sending side has been slow to emerge. This paper fills this gap and locates the analysis of migration desires within the literature on the Indian middle classes. I demonstrate how a middle-class culture of education that articulates hegemonic experiences, aspirations, and trajectories drives many aspiring middle-class young men to consider migrating as an alternative path to social mobility. Migration emerges as a temporary strategy geared towards accruing economic and cultural capital necessary for the fulfilment of class-based personal ambitions and wider social responsibilities at home. Migration is shown to stretch the boundaries of processes of class formation that now straddles multiple sites, resources, and aspirations.

This paper investigates the emergence of ‘internationalised’ schools as a form of middle-class aspiration in Kochi, India. It complements recent literature on the growth of international schools catering for host country elites, and shows how private schools are actively engaged in extending the aspiration for internationalised education among the city’s middle classes. The article shows how internationalised schooling has penetrated beyond Indian metropoles into secondary cities. It provides a detailed ethnographic account of how a private school has rebranded itself as an ‘internationalised’ school, involving the introduction of new practices and the repackaging of the school’s old nationalist project.

The purpose of this study was to examine the aspirations and future plans of study and work among non-national higher secondary students in Dubai. In addition, this research also aimed to develop and understanding of the role played by schools in shaping aspirations and future plans. The study involved primarily an online survey and three in-depth focus group interviews completed respectively by 128 and 18 students from two Dubai schools: A British Curriculum school and an IB curriculum school. There were students of 17 different nationalities involved, of which South Asians comprised a large group of respondents.

Research on Indian overseas students in Australia has shown that there is an intricate connection between class and migration processes. Yet most of this work has focused on the experiences of students already abroad. Research on the formulation of migration-decisions and class dynamics from the sending side has been slow to emerge. This paper fills this gap and locates the analysis of migration desires within the literature on the Indian middle classes. I demonstrate how a middle-class culture of education that articulates hegemonic experiences, aspirations, and trajectories drives many aspiring middle-class young men to consider migrating as an alternative path to social mobility. Migration emerges as a temporary strategy geared towards accruing economic and cultural capital necessary for the fulfilment of class-based personal ambitions and wider social responsibilities at home. Migration is shown to stretch the boundaries of processes of class formation that now straddles multipl...