Education inclusion as a border regime: implications for mobile pastoralists in Ethiopia’s Afar region

Abstract

This paper extends and enriches debates on migration, borders and education by conceptualising education inclusion as a border regime. It applies a regime analysis to illustrate the borders of education inclusion for a community that migration studies have hitherto neglected: mobile pastoralists. It argues that education inclusion signifies a new form of social belonging and border crossing that many mobile pastoralists are undertaking, often precipitated by dispossession from their traditional, mobile livelihood. Supported by empirical data from Ethiopia’s Afar region, the regime analysis reveals how educational opportunity for these learners is regulated by border ‘checkpoints’. It identifies persisting and emerging inequalities of opportunity under current regimes of education inclusion that challenge the Sustainable Development Goal pledges to reach the last first. A re-appraisal of scholarly boundaries is called for to support the interdisciplinary effort needed to place mobile pastoralists among those who count first.