Tertium Comparationis: Issue 1/2025, 31. Volume Relationale Perspektiven auf Lernnetzwerke in der majority world und global zirkulierende Bildungskonzepte als post-koloniale Reflexion

In countries of the majority world (Dasen & Akkari, 2008), massive interventions through colonization processes resulted in educational systems with different socio-economic figurations than in the minority world. There are large expectations in the possibilities of social rise through education which are very rarely fulfilled. Despite massive investment in school education by family members, the life paths and career trajectories of many young people are largely shaped by relationships and learning spaces outside of school. This is the starting point of the project Making a living. Learning trajectories towards the ability to earn a livelihood, in which we analyze case studies of rural youths’ educational figurations to elaborate the various figurations in which young people earn a living. This text presents one of these case studies and discusses the extent to which relational approaches are better able to identify specific educational figurations than conventional approaches. We see this as an important and decolonial contribution to reflections on the global education sector.

Keywords
Education, relational approaches, majority world, Benin, rural youth