Geographies of Laboring and Learning: Introduction.

Abstract

This introductory chapter to the volume “Laboring and Learning” provides an overview of a diverse and fascinating range of contributions made by academics; engaging with some salient themes that inform debates on the area; explaining and justifying the selection of contributors and the division of their chapters into three principal sections. Section 3.1 aims to showcase the breadth and depth of contemporary scholarship in this field, in both theoretical and empirical terms. These papers (compared to the chapters in the volume as a whole) have been chosen for the ways in which they bring to the fore different perspectives on key issues around education and work. Section 3.2 is particularly attentive to the value gained by a geographical sensibility. The papers in this section have a more specific empirical focus, often representing particular spatial contexts, but are also geographically diverse, combining perspectives form the Global South and North. Section 3.3 focuses on livelihoods, transitions, and social reproduction. Here, there is more specific attention paid to the questions of age and intergenerationality. The empirical contexts represented are similarly diverse in their geographic scope. As a whole, the volume presents cutting-edge scholarship wherein both “work” and “education” are expansively defined and discussed, often interlinked and interdependent, and sometimes hard to distinguish in any one particular context. It aims to highlight the rich complexity of the lives of children and young people and to give them a voice in wider intellectual discussions of laboring and learning.