Education, Aspiration and Social Mobility: Uncertain Futures for Rural Youth in India

Informed by over two decades of anthropological research in Chhattisgarh, Education, Aspiration and Social Mobility brings ethnographic nuance to the contradictory ways in which education represents both a strategy for social mobility and a very tangible risk, whose transformative potential is not as straightforward as proponents suggest. This book examines the relationship between education, aspiration and social mobility amongst marginalized Adivasi (tribal) youth in rural India and how young people navigate the tensions and uncertainty that emanate from this contradiction – fashioning their own meanings and understandings of education against a backdrop of structural constraints and a future in flux.