Private school investments and inequalities: negotiating the future in transnational Dakar

Abstract

AbstractAs in many parts of the world, the school system in Senegal has suffered from state budget cuts associated with structural adjustment and neoliberal reform in the 1980s. As a result, the quality of elementary public schools has been compromised; meanwhile a significant private sector developed. This article analyses the proliferation of private schools in Dakar and the ways in which Senegalese parents navigate the multiplicity of school types (French, Franco-Arabic or Franco-English, Catholic or secular), to understand how families struggle to ensure their social and material reproduction in a neoliberal economy. I suggest that educational investments are situated at the intersection of global and intra-family inequalities. International migration has made global inequalities apparent within and between Senegalese families, who are unequally positioned depending on whether they include members living abroad.