Articles by Vijitha Rajan

The manner in which migration and education interact in often unanticipated ways in urban spaces is examined. Drawing on a fieldwork narrative from Bengaluru, questions on migrant children’s access to schooling are explored, and its interfaces with “being a migrant” in the city are located. Migrant communities’ precarious experiences of the city significantly shape the educational experiences of children. The out-of-school construct has to be understood in a nuanced and layered manner in order to envisage meaningful educational initiatives for migrant children.

Dominant discourses on childhood, which assume that it is a static and universally defined phenomenon, have failed to locate the lives of migrant children within them. The need to understand how migrant childhoods are experienced in the historical, political and sociocultural matrix, rather than looking for solace in the universal normativity of childhood, is a critical aspect of policy formulation that concerns the lives and education of migrant children.