Educational Expansion and the Promise of Social Mobility in a Postcolonial Context

Arif Naveed’s scholarship offers an in-depth analysis of whether the promise of social mobility offered by the expansion of education in Pakistan has been delivered. It asks how education has impacted on the national poverty-education gap and whether education succeeds at a local level, given the powerful constraints associated with the social structure in rural Punjab. The volume offers new theoretical and methodological tools for the study of social and economic mobility through education in a Southern context. The historical analysis of Pakistan’s educational reform and large-scale national statistical data sets uncovers the changing nature of the origins-education-destinations triangle. Using an innovative Habitus Listening Guide, the voices of fathers, mothers, sons and daughters reveal their aspirations and strategies to achieve taraqqi (‘a better life’), despite the social closure strategies used by the elite and the material realities that the disadvantaged face. Compiled posthumously by a team of leading academics, this rich multi-dimensional study of education’s impact will be of interest to scholars and researchers in the fields of social mobility studies, international and comparative education, post-colonial studies, rural development and South Asian studies. Policy-makers will appreciate Naveed’s key insights about how to ensure that the education promise is fulfilled for all.