Learning, Migration and Intergenerational Relations

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