Learning, Migration and Intergenerational Relations: The Karen and the Gift of Education

Focusing on the Karen people in Burma,
Thailand and the United Kingdom, this book analyses how global, regional and
local developments affect patterns of learning. It combines historical
and ethnographic research to explore the mutual shaping of intergenerational
relations and children's practical and formal learning within a context of
migration and socio-political change. In this endeavour, Pia Jolliffe discusses
traditional patterns of socio-cultural learning within Karen communities as
well as the role of Christian missionaries in introducing schooling to the
Karen in Burma and in Thailand. This is followed by an analysis of children's
migration for education in northern Thailand where state schools often encourage
students' aspirations towards upward social mobility at the same time as
schools reproduce social inequality between the rural Karen and urban Thai
society. The author draws attention to international humanitarian agencies who
deliver education to refugees and migrants at the Thai-Burma border, as well as
the role of UK government schools in the process of resettling Karen refugees.
In this way, the book analyses the connections between learning, migration and
intergenerational relations in households, schools and other institutions at
the local, regional and global level.