CFEE Seminar – “Schooling Dilemmas: Young People and the Future of Agro-Pastoralists in Hamar on Ethiopia’s Southwestern Frontier”
Seminar – “Schooling Dilemmas: Young People and the Future of Agro-Pastoralists in Hamar on Ethiopia’s Southwestern Frontier”
By Sabrina Maurus, PhD
Monday 13th October, 2 PM
French Center for Ethiopian Studies. Conference open to all.
Compulsory schooling has become a social good that is hardly criticised. However, the phenomenon of school-educated unemployed youth and a conflict that developed in Hamar District about the implementation of the ‘education for all’ children in 2014/15 raises questions about the implications of schooling.
This presentation is based on a PhD thesis and draws on ethnographic fieldwork during the outbreak of the conflict in Hamar. It follows the lives of first-generation students from agro-pastoral families, who become intermediaries between their agro-pastoral kin and the state. Both groups use children and their education in trying to shape the future, which creates dilemmas for school-educated youths who are related to both groups and navigate tensions throughout their life courses.
The presentation analyses dilemmas in five fields: (1) children’s education and contribution in agro-pastoralist households, (2) learning in rural schools, (3) movements between rural and urban lifestyles, (4) initiation, marriage and schooling, (5) claims to power on the frontier of the state, which are fought through children’s belonging.
Educational decisions about young people’s learning in and outside school shape wider social, economic and political processes. Therefore, the perspectives of children and youth, and the study of education and schooling, should be integrated into research on politics, kinship, and the economy to grasp the complexities of rural transformations.
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Secrétaire Scientifique (8 octobre 2025). CFEE Seminar – “Schooling Dilemmas: Young People and the Future of Agro-Pastoralists in Hamar on Ethiopia’s Southwestern Frontier”. UN ŒIL SUR LA CORNE / AN EYE ON THE HORN. Consulté le 16 novembre 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/14vn4





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