Territorial and mobility justice for Indigenous youth: accessing education in Ecuadorian Amazonia

Abstract

ABSTRACT Indigenous people of Ecuador have suffered for a long time from marginalisation in access to quality education, which for them means culturally and ecologically pertinent education close to their own communities. During the past decade, education reform and closure of small rural schools worsened the spatial accessibility of schooling and increased the eco-cultural distance of education from the students’ lives. These two elements – spatial and eco-cultural representation – are constitutive of territorial rights claimed by Indigenous people. In this study, we aim to articulate the relationship between access to eco-culturally pertinent education, and mobility and territorial justice. Based on the review of studies on education reform, fieldwork in Amazonia in 2018–2019, and remote conversations in 2020, we identified and analysed three events – education reform, Indigenous protests and the Covid-19 pandemic, which have disrupted access to education within Indigenous territories. These turbulent events make visible territorial and mobility injustices, including the dismissal of Indigenous visions of education, the strategic weakening of Indigenous territorial defence, and the lack of state support for access to education in remote areas. The analysis advocates for the recognition of mobility and territoriality as part of the social justice agenda in quality education.