Making a virtue of necessity?

Pierre Bourdieu's work (e.g. Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1984; Bourdieu and Passeron Reference Bourdieu and Passeron1990 [1977]) has been very influential within anthropological and sociological thinking on the question of how education perpetuates inequality and disadvantage (e.g. Willis Reference Willis1981; Levinson et al. Reference Levinson, Holland, Levinson, Foley and Holland1996; Jeffrey et al. Reference Jeffrey, Jeffery and Jeffery2004). His notion of ‘habitus’ in particular has been popular for capturing situations like that of Nafisa and her grandsons, who appear ‘to make a virtue of necessity’ (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1990a: 54) and view an educational choice made in very constrained circumstances as a positive decision taken to honour religious and social commitments.

Bourdieu proposes the notion of ‘habitus’, defined as ‘a system of durable, transposable dispositions’ (Reference Bourdieu1990a: 53), as a tool to analyse how people internalise and embody their social positions, including the low status and limited opportunities that potentially accompany them. According to him, the dominated develop dispositions that prevent them from attempting to achieve ‘what is already denied’ to them; instead, they ‘will the inevitable’ (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1990a: 54). The notion of ‘habitus’ seeks to capture both ‘the experience of social agents and…the objective structures which make this experience possible’ (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1988: 782, as cited in Reay Reference Reay2004: 439). Arguably, ‘habitus’ thus offers ‘a means of viewing structure as occurring within small-scale interactions and activity within large-scale settings’ (Reay Reference Reay2004: 439).

Bourdieu himself uses the concept of ‘habitus’ largely to understand class inequalities and their reproduction (e.g. Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1984; Bourdieu and Passeron Reference Bourdieu and Passeron1990 [1977]). Yet, a range of authors within the anthropology and sociology of education have also applied it to other forms of inequality, including gender inequalities (e.g. Connolly Reference Connolly1998; McNay Reference McNay1999) and ethnic or racial disadvantage (e.g. Archer and Francis Reference Archer and Francis2006). The malleability of the notion of ‘habitus’ makes it potentially applicable in situations like that of Nafisa, Samaila, and Yunusa, where different forms of disadvantage coincide. For Nafisa and her grandsons, the negative consequences of socio-economic deprivation, rural location, and social vulnerability compound each other.

While the notion of ‘habitus’ as the repository of wider societal power relations can shed light on important aspects of the decision-making processes underpinning almajiri education, several caveats have to be kept in mind. The first relates to the close relationship that Bourdieu establishes between ‘habitus’ and social reproduction; in this regard, his work has been critiqued for its latent determinism (see, e.g., Willis Reference Willis1977; Reference Willis1981). While Bourdieu argues that ‘habitus’ ‘goes hand in hand with vagueness and indeterminacy’ (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1990b: 77, as cited in Reay Reference Reay2004: 433), he nonetheless expects structures of domination to be largely reproduced.

His work acknowledges a limited number of openings in which change becomes possible. These include, for example, when ‘habitus’ is taken out of the ‘social world of which it is the product’ and thus stops being ‘like “a fish in water”’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant Reference Bourdieu and Wacquant1992: 127; see McNay Reference McNay1999: 106). This arguably creates disjunctures that make change possible.

However, some critics have gone even further, and have argued that situations of mismatch between the ‘social world’ and ‘habitus’ are not the only moments in which people at the receiving end of societal power relations may reflect critically on their condition. As Sayer (Reference Sayer2005: 29) argues, ‘reflexivity is certainly not the preserve of academics but is common to people regardless of their social position’. If parents or caregivers and almajirai themselves may be seen to make a virtue of necessity, for instance when they declare hardship to be a valuable form of character training, this does not mean that they are oblivious to the social and economic conditions in which particular educational decisions are taken, or that they are incapable of aspiring to anything other than what the ‘objective conditions’ make inevitable (e.g. Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1990a: 64–5). Nafisa, for example, unhesitatingly acknowledged the role that financial constraints played in her educational decisions when I enquired why she did not enrol her grandsons in one of the secular schools in Albasu.Footnote ³

If many of my research participants discussed almajiri enrolment primarily as a deliberate child-raising strategy motivated by religious and moral considerations, leaving aside structural factors, we cannot conclude from this that they do not reflect on these factors, or that these factors do not play a part. Rather, we have to consider carefully the reasons for these silences. People are likely to switch, depending on the situation, between acknowledging the material pressures limiting their room for manoeuvre, and portraying their situation as the result of deliberate action motivated, for instance, by moral or religious considerations. In a context where poverty carries negative connotations, keeping up appearances is a way of eschewing poverty-related shame.

A final caveat we have to bear in mind when using Bourdieu's work is that it risks downplaying the intrinsic values of religion, which he portrays extensively as an instrument of power (e.g. Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1971).Footnote ⁴ As will become clear throughout this chapter, we cannot use people's ‘objective conditions’ alone (read as material and social circumstances) to determine who enrols boys as almajirai, although these conditions play an important role. Almajiri education is not merely ‘virtue made of necessity’, but also a positive choice of its own. If we want to account for this, we have to take people's religious commitments seriously in their own right. Having said this, a sensibility to ‘habitus’ can help us examine how particular religious ideas and aspirations have emerged historically, and in which social worlds (or ‘fields’) they have currency – and where they seem out of place. People in urban areas, for example, are more likely to honour their religious commitments by enrolling their sons in Islamiyya or local Qur'anic schools than by sending them away as almajirai. Taking these theoretical considerations as a starting point, this chapter analyses the processes underpinning almajiri enrolment, by drawing on ethnographic observation in a ‘sending area’ (the rural town of Albasu), personal life histories of current and former almajirai, and in-depth interviews and casual conversations with their parents and caregivers.

While in other aspects of my research being female obliged me to be inventive in order to establish a rapport with my research participants, in my research on the reasons underpinning almajiri enrolment being a woman was an asset, echoing the experiences of earlier female researchers studying northern Nigeria since the 1940s.Footnote ⁵ It may seem counterintuitive to acclaim female mobility in a context with one of the strictest regimes of female seclusion or purdah (Hausa: kulle) within the Islamic world (see Callaway Reference Callaway1987; Robson Reference Robson2000), yet, on balance, many more people and spaces are considered off-limits for a man than for a woman. A man would probably be denied access to the wives and compounds of men to whom he is not related. The ‘only’ restrictions on female mobility are those ordained by ‘shame’ (kunya) and those imposed by male ‘guardians’: husbands in the case of married women, and male relatives in the case of unmarried women. Several authors have demonstrated the negotiated nature of such controls on female mobility, with women exercising much more agency than conventionally assumed (see Werthmann Reference Werthmann1997).

As a single Western woman, I ended up with the ‘best’ of both worlds: endowed with an imaginary carte blanche from my ‘guardians’ back home (who apparently had allowed me to come to Nigeria on my own), unmarried (and thus not bringing shame to a potential husband visibly not in control of my movements), and non-Muslim (and thus less bound by what people considered Islamically ordained), I could be close to a wide range of people. By virtue of being a woman, I could enter people's houses freely and befriend the women inside. I made ample use of this opportunity, and willingly accepted the numerous invitations of the women attending the evening classes I gave in Albasu to visit them during the day when married women are conventionally expected to remain inside their compounds. The malamai whose schools I visited frequently, moreover, suggested I befriend their wives, which I did with pleasure. While I spoke to a large number of both men and women in my research, much of the data I draw on in this chapter comes from conversations with women such as Nafisa: mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and sisters of almajirai.

Interestingly, my conversations with women brought to the fore more easily the structural factors underpinning almajiri enrolment, factors that received little or no mention in my interviews with men. This may be because I interviewed them earlier on in my research, when I was less familiar with the context and thus less able to ask specific questions. It may also be because as a woman myself, I built up trusting relationships more easily with other women, with whom I could interact frequently, casually, and unconstrained by northern Nigeria's strict regime of gender segregation. Women and mothers may also be generally more sceptical about almajiri enrolment, and therefore less inclined to foreground legitimising discourses. The youths participating in the film project, for example, agreed that most mothers were not happy to see their sons leave as almajirai. But if men were reluctant to discuss constraining circumstances with me, this may also be because as heads of households they were – at least theoretically – responsible for the well-being of the children under their authority, and therefore more concerned with upholding a discourse that would legitimise their enrolment decisions. Women, on the other hand, did not hesitate to reveal instances when care arrangements had broken down, pointing out larger questions around poverty-related shame and concealment strategies.

Disbanded families, unstable marriages, and ‘evil stepmothers’

Nafisa, who made the statement above, was referring to the sons of her daughter's new husband when she stated that ‘an orphan's only option is to study!’ The man's previous wife had passed away, leaving him with several now motherless children.Footnote ⁶ That their father was alive and well did not prevent Nafisa from declaring these children ‘orphans’ (maraya).Footnote ⁷ Tellingly, after their mother's death, all three sons of the man in question had been enrolled as almajirai. This section explores the particular vulnerability of children who grow up without a mother nearby, and how this relates to almajiri enrolment.

Divorce is frequent and easy to achieve in Hausaland. Unlike Christianity, Islam does not regard marriage as a lifelong and, in principle, unbreakable bond. Consequently, less stigma is attached to divorce (Werthmann Reference Werthmann1997: 151, 166). For a divorce to be effective, a husband merely pronounces the formula of repudiation (na sake ki – I have divorced you). However, unless he has already divorced his wife in this way two previous times, she may return within a period of three months. Women can – and do – also prompt their husbands to divorce them, for example by ‘fleeing’ to their parents’ house and refusing to return, an act called yaji, which is a term also used for hot spices (see Callaway Reference Callaway1987; Werthmann Reference Werthmann1997). Leaving a husband in a ‘hot’ temper, however, mostly means that women must leave their children behind.

The people in my field sites considered poverty, men's sexual ‘greediness’, and women's presumed ‘materialism’ and lack of serenity the main reasons for high divorce rates. The youths participating in the film project, for example, declared that some rich men easily lose patience with their wives’ misdemeanours. But the youths also accused girls from poor families of caring only about money when choosing their husbands, and of lacking moderation when making material demands on them. They also acknowledged that poor parents may decide to marry their daughters off into problematic arrangements for financial reasons, and that men sought marriage even when they did not have the means to sustain a family. Women in Albasu stated that some men lost interest in their wives once their bodies began to wear the marks of several pregnancies. They also discussed fights with or because of co-wives (the Hausa word for co-wife is kishiya, from kishi, or jealousy) and the husband's inability to take care of the basic needs of his family (food, soap, clothes) as important reasons for divorce.

Smith found that, in the 1950s, Hausa women married about three to four times on average before menopause (1959: 244). Comprehensive data on current divorce rates does not exist as most marriages are divorced outside a court, making data collection difficult. Uwais et al. (Reference Uwais, Mansfield, Bamali and Manuel2009: 20), drawing on interviews with bus drivers and amalanke pushers (cart-pushers), who traditionally carry a bride's possessions upon both marriage and divorce, estimate that over 75 per cent of marriages in Kano City end in divorce. The repeated efforts by the Kwankwaso administration of Kano State to marry off widows and divorcees at state expense illustrate the sense of crisis enveloping divorce in Kano.Footnote ⁸

High divorce rates beg the question of what becomes of the children from dissolved marriages. According to orthodox Maliki law, which most northern Nigerian Muslims follow at least nominally, a divorced mother is entitled to custody of her sons until they reach the age of seven, and of her daughters until they reach the age of puberty. If she remarries, custody is given to the children's maternal grandmother. The children's father is obliged to provide financially for the children's upkeep (Owasanoye Reference Owasanoye2005: 422–3). However, these rules are rarely followed to the letter.Footnote ⁹

In practice, divorced mothers have very little control over their children. Fathers may either decide to keep them all, even small children (once they have been weaned), or demand some or all of the children from their mother at any point in time. While fathers are theoretically obliged to provide financially for children living with a divorced mother or with maternal relatives, they often fail to do so, and women may be reluctant to lodge their claims for fear of having their children taken away from them. From the perspective of mothers, it is often they who must shoulder the financial burden of raising children, at least while they are small, whereas fathers lay claim to them, particularly the boys, once they are old and strong enough to add to the household's labour pool.

The example of Azumi, a boy of around 14 years whom I befriended in the household of the District Head of Albasu, illustrates this logic well. Azumi had been under the care of his mother after his parents divorced, and she had enrolled him as an almajiri in Albasu. Azumi seemed to enjoy his stay in Albasu, which was considerably larger than his home village and where his daily needs were taken care of by the household of the District Head, for whom he worked as a domestic. The District Head's wife and I were making plans for him to enrol in boko school in addition to Islamiyya and Qur'anic school when, at the beginning of the rainy season, his father requested his return to help him with the farm work. Although he was unhappy about leaving, Azumi dared not refuse his father's request.

It was not only requests from children's biological fathers that put divorced mothers at risk of having their children taken away. In addition, divorced women of child-bearing age are under substantial pressure to remarry quickly so as not to risk their moral reputation, and not to be a burden on their parents or relatives whom they move back in with (see Werthmann Reference Werthmann1997; cf. Mahmood Reference Mahmood2005: 179ff. on divorcees in Egypt). Few men are willing to shoulder the additional burden of providing for the children a woman brings with her from a previous marriage. Consequently, children not claimed by fathers are often redistributed to relatives in a context where fostering is common practice (see, e.g., Werthmann Reference Werthmann2002: 116). An additional option for boys is to be enrolled as almajirai.

My informants considered children staying with their father after their mother had left the household to be vulnerable to neglect and abuse by their father's new wives and co-wives (cf. Pittin Reference Pittin1986: 50). The same holds true for maternal orphans – and maternal mortality rates are high. In 2008, the Kano State Health Service Management Board estimated that the maternal mortality ratio in the state was 1,600 deaths per 100,000 live births; this is more than twice the national average (Federal Ministry of Health 2011; Galadanci et al. Reference Galadanci, Idris, Sadauki and Yakasai2010).Footnote ¹⁰ If a boy has no mother, his father's other wives accuse him of being responsible for the mischief of their own children; as a group of women from my class in Albasu explained, such children have no one to defend them.

Often, other women in the household notice if a child suffers at the hands of a stepmother. In Daho, a village near Albasu that I visited frequently, I witnessed a dispute between Hauwa and her daughter-in-law, whom Hauwa reproached for beating four-year-old Ali too much (Ali was her stepson and Hauwa's grandson who had stayed behind after his mother had left the household). Recounting the incident, Hauwa grumbled that nobody had any plans to take Ali anywhere, so his stepmother should better come to terms with his presence. But sympathetic relatives, or fathers, intervening on behalf of ‘motherless’ children may also consider enrolment as an almajiri to be a preferable alternative to abusive conditions at home, and they may advocate or decide that a boy be taken to Qur'anic school. For example, Tabawa, a woman attending our evening classes, made sure that her younger brother was enrolled as an almajiri after their mother died as she felt that their father was beating the boy too much. While Qur'anic schools are known for not sparing the rod on their students either, the beatings meted out in such schools are commonly considered benign – presumably they ultimately make a child a better Muslim. Beatings from spiteful relations – like beatings from secular school teachers – on the other hand, are looked upon critically.

It is difficult to know how large a share of overall almajiri enrolments is made up of boys from disbanded families, not least since this is not an aspect of their life history almajirai willingly reveal (see Chapter 6). But given that boys from such families are more likely to be moved back and forth between relatives and more likely to lack somebody to assume financial responsibility for their education, they are certainly more likely candidates for almajiri enrolment than boys from stable households.

Subsistence agriculture and food scarcity

The current pattern of smallholding agriculture in Kano developed largely at the beginning of the twentieth century as aristocratic estates based on slave labour were gradually dissolved, with former slaves setting themselves up as independent farmers (Mustapha and Meagher Reference Mustapha and Meagher2000: 4; see also M. F. Smith Reference Smith1954). Land previously too unsafe to settle became available as slave raids on farmers subsided (Tiffen Reference Tiffen2001: 14). At the same time, the colonial regime began taxing the peasantry on an unprecedented scale, steadily siphoning off resources; this situation would come to an end only in the late 1970s (Mustapha and Meagher Reference Mustapha and Meagher2000: 35). This ‘haemorrhage’ through taxes was supplemented in the late colonial and early independence period by the work of marketing boards, which extracted surpluses from the production of cash crops, especially groundnuts (ibid.: 31), leading Mustapha and Meagher to wonder whether the fate of the rural population would have been less bleak if its resources had not been appropriated on such a massive scale.

During a brief period during the 1970s and early 1980s, rural populations experienced real improvements in their living conditions as oil wealth was used to finance infrastructure projects including rural electrification and water supply schemes. Such expenditures, however, were slashed when the oil boom economy ran aground and when, in 1986, structural adjustment was initiated (Mustapha and Meagher Reference Mustapha and Meagher2000: 48). Many infrastructure projects have since fallen into disrepair. Structural adjustment squeezed livelihoods in rural Kano as input and consumption prices rose even faster than crop prices. Farmers who produced less grain than they consumed, and were thus obliged to buy additional grain, were harmed by high prices. While wealthy peasant households could take advantage of new market opportunities, many poor households could not, which increased differentiation and inequality (ibid.: 50; Meagher Reference Meagher2001).

Today, in contrast to most of the last century, smallholding farmers in northern Nigeria are largely free from government exactions. Yet, as Abba noted as early as 1983, comparatively speaking ‘the farmer in his mud house is relatively worse off than before’ because ‘now some live in large cement houses with asbestos roofs and electricity and plumbing and have cars’ (Abba Reference Abba and Barkindo1983: 203). Growing inequality and stratification among the rural population, as well as between cities and countryside, is likely to affect subjective experiences of poverty. Moreover, a number of structural changes have likely exacerbated the difficulties faced by the poor rural majority.

Massive demographic growth, with the Nigerian population more than quadrupling since 1950 (United Nations 2009), has increased competition, especially for fertile and conveniently located farmland (a trend already noted by Polly Hill in the 1970s; Hill Reference Hill1977; see also Mustapha and Meagher Reference Mustapha and Meagher1992). Kano State has one of the highest population growth rates (3.5 per cent per year) among the Nigerian states. The population of Albasu grew at 3.4 per cent per annum between 1991 and 2006, the years in which censuses were conducted. Rainfall has become less reliable (Sawa and Adebayo Reference Sawa and Adebayo2011) and soil quality has deteriorated in places, also because resources to buy fertiliser are lacking (Mustapha and Meagher Reference Mustapha and Meagher1992; Mortimore Reference Mortimore1998).

Often, several men from the same lineage, especially fathers and sons, form a farming unit (gandu) to pool resources and relieve individual insecurity (see Hill Reference Hill1972). Most rural households engage in a range of different economic activities to spread risk and diversify income. Livestock is raised (chicken, guinea fowl, goats), but mostly for sale rather than for consumption as meat is a luxury not many can afford. Wild foods are collected, mostly for consumption, but they are also sometimes marketed (for example, moringa tree leaves (zogale) and mangoes (mangwaro), and the fruits of locust bean trees (ɗorawa), shea trees (kadanya), or tamarind trees (tsamiya)).

Most households farm for subsistence as well as for sale. The main crops grown in Albasu are early and late millet, guinea corn, maize, beans, and groundnuts. People may also plant watermelons, capsicum, sesame, cassava, and henna in smaller quantities. While millet and guinea corn are the staple food crops, none of the planted varieties are purely a cash crop. All are part of the local diet and can be marketed if the need for cash arises (see, e.g., Hill Reference Hill1972: 26–31). Special crops (such as onions, tomatoes, rice, and sugar cane) are cultivated on irrigable farmland (fadama), which is, however, scarce around Albasu.

Non-farm activities have long been central to the livelihood strategies of rural households in a climatic zone where rainfall is unreliable and droughts intermittent (Meagher Reference Meagher2001: 43). Cash can be raised for emergencies through trade and craftwork, to purchase foodstuffs or to buy farming inputs (Hill Reference Hill1972: 30). While traditional crafts such as weaving and pottery have declined in the face of competition from imported industrial goods, Meagher finds that ‘economic restructuring since the mid-1980s has tended to reinforce the importance of non-farm incomes’ (2001: 43). For example, men engage in the retail selling of agricultural products or industrial goods not available locally, such as toiletries, household goods, school supplies, or processed foodstuffs.Footnote ¹¹

While many households struggle for their existence year-round, hunger is most acute during the months of the rainy season. This is when stocks run low because seeds are needed for planting,Footnote ¹² household members return home for farm work, and the new harvest is not yet in. Malnutrition rates are high. Food-insecure households may therefore enrol boys as almajirai to reduce their subsistence burden. This is often interpreted as a sign of parents’ callousness towards their sons, but I also met parents who decided to enrol boys as almajirai because they could not bear to see them suffering. Jamila, for example, a poor peasant's wife, told me that her sons had been sent to Qur'anic school because there was not enough food in the house:

It would be misleading, however, to assume that all almajirai come from food-insecure households. Indeed, it is not necessarily the poorest households in a community that enrol their boys as almajirai. For the ‘ultra-poor’ (Last Reference Last and Hubert2000a), even the limited expenditures required to enrol a boy as an almajiri may be burdensome. A wooden board on which to write the Qur'an, a bowl for begging, a sleeping mat, and a gift for the malam (mostly in the form of grain) need to be provided, and transport costs must be covered. Sympathetic relatives may pay these if parents cannot afford them. Nafisa, for example, paid for her grandson Samaila's expenses. A family not only ‘financially poor’ but also ‘poor in people’ may struggle, and I met youths in Albasu who did not have the funds to return to their Qur'anic school after the farming season.Footnote ¹³

Several of the Qur'anic teachers I met (one of them was among the wealthiest people of his village, owning several horses and other animals) sent their own sons to schools where they either begged or farmed for their livelihood. The son of one of the Qur'anic teachers I was close to in Albasu begged for his food – despite living at home where there was food available.Footnote ¹⁴ The perception even of fathers who did not enrol their own sons as almajirai was that a particularly strong commitment to religious knowledge rather than poverty – combined with the belief that this could best be acquired away from home – determined who opted for almajiri enrolment. This confirms the argument that we have to take seriously in their own right the religious and moral/social commitments leading to almajiri enrolment, and cannot reduce them to a mere reflection of material circumstances. At the same time, we should remain conscious of the wider contexts – beyond food scarcity – in which such choices are made.

The rhythms and requirements of peasant households

Most children in rural northern Nigeria work, often for several hours a day and in addition to schooling (see, e.g., Robson Reference Robson2004, writing about Zarewa village, southern Kano State).Footnote ¹⁵ It is mostly boys who till their families’ fields, but girls also help with labour-intensive tasks such as planting. Both boys and girls care for livestock, gather firewood, wild foods, and fodder, process agricultural food crops, and help with house construction and repair works. Children also complete daily household tasks such as fetching water and running errands. Girls also look after younger siblings. In addition, children, especially girls, hawk (talla) produce or wares, either to contribute to their family's subsistence on behalf of their – mostly secluded – mothers, or to earn cash for their own marriage expenses (Robson Reference Robson2004: 201–6).

The availability of children – especially sons – of a suitable age to engage in work influences household decisions about children's educational trajectories. I met fathers who enrolled all their sons as almajirai, but my sense was that some children – either girls or boys too young to be enrolled as almajirai – will usually be kept at home to perform daily chores beyond the ‘reach’ of women in purdah, such as fetching water or running errands. Boys whose help is required in agriculture or trade to ensure their household's survival have few opportunities to attend ‘modern’ school. However, almajiri enrolment may be tailored around such work demands. Sons can be – and are – summoned back during the farming season when labour demands peak.

On the limited fadama (irrigable lowland areas), farming is possible year-round. Work in rain-fed agriculture, however, is more seasonal. There are tasks specific to the dry season, such as house and roof repairs and the maintenance of fences, and livestock droppings have to be swept up and carried to the fields as manure (from March). But the ‘peak season’ begins with the first rains (around April or May) and ends about two months after the rains have stopped (around November). Labour demand is greatest for ridging, sowing, repeated weeding, and harvesting – tasks that have to be performed within a certain time frame to be effective. Other jobs (such as building and repair works) are less time-bound and can be done gradually. The almajirai insisted that there was little demand for hired labour (ƙwadago) outside the peak season and that there were very few opportunities to earn an income apart from gathering firewood (itace) and corn or guinea corn stalks (kara).

Once the harvest is in and stored and labour demands subside, many young men leave the rural areas and head for the cities for ci rani, to ‘eat away the dry season’ (see Mustapha and Meagher Reference Mustapha and Meagher1992; Reference Mustapha and Meagher2000; Mortimore Reference Mortimore1998; Reference Mortimore2003). Many Qur'anic schools also follow the rhythm of the agricultural seasons, with intense study, including nightly study sessions, during the agriculturally less busy dry season, and a more lax lesson schedule or holidays during the farming season. Urban Qur'anic schools release their students to return to rural areas during this period to help their parents or teachers farm.

While most senior malamai are settled – i.e. they have a family, a compound, and a stable livelihood – junior teachers and students are often highly mobile. During the dry season, young aspiring teachers (from about 18 years upwards) with several almajirai under their care may leave their wet-season abode where they were attached to a stationary senior malam. They either move to a fixed dry-season residence (changing from year to year, but often located in an urban area), or start a migratory tour that will only end with the return of the rains. During their travels, they lodge with stationary malamai in the villages they visit. At the end of the dry season, they mostly return to the ‘home base’ school from where they departed.Footnote ¹⁶

Young men from rural areas may migrate to the urban centres during the dry season in order to earn some cash, either to start a family or to support an already existing one,Footnote ¹⁷ and they attach themselves to a Qur'anic teacher to set themselves up (see Lubeck Reference Lubeck1985; Khalid Reference Khalid1997). Gathering the resources to launch an adult career – that is, to build a room for prospective bride(s) and children, and to marry – presents a real challenge to adolescent boys and young men in a largely eroding rural economy where opportunities to earn cash income are scarce. The cities offer petty income opportunities as street vendors and odd-job men. Moreover, for older youths with sufficient means and determination, moving to an urban area as an almajiri may be a strategy to acquire (belatedly) some ‘modern’ secular knowledge. I met several Qur'anic students in their late teens and early twenties who attended adult literacy evening classes in Kano – a rare opportunity in rural areas.

The Qur'anic schooling system thus synchronises well with the work rhythms of peasant households. This is true not only over the seasons, but also during the day. Qur'anic schools hold their first lesson in the early morning hours and break to free their students for agricultural tasks before the midday heat sets in. Mid-mornings and afternoons are mostly lesson-free, at least in rural schools during the farming season, and many schools hold sessions after dusk, when they do not compete with their students’ other work obligations.

Given how well integrated the almajiri system is with peasant households’ work rhythms, its students acquire agricultural knowledge as a matter of course. The almajirai in Albasu could satisfy my curiosity about Hausa plant names and their uses without hesitation. On the occasions when the almajirai I befriended in Albasu took me to their fields, I was impressed by the ease with which they performed their tasks. When I commented on his speed of planting, Buhari declared with some pride ‘aikina ne’: his skilfulness should not surprise me given that ‘this was his work’. The almajirai monitored and corrected each other's work. Abbas, for example, rebuked his younger brother Mustapha for planting seed beans too close to each other: ‘These are beans!’ Both Malam Nasiru and Malam Ahmed, the two malamai I visited most frequently in Albasu, had allocated their students small plots of land where they grew their own crops for sale. The returns allowed them to buy soap, clothes, or shoes. Kabiru, one of the older almajirai, raised his own goat.

Almajirai staying in urban areas permanently do not achieve a mastery of agricultural tasks to quite the same extent. Sadisu (whose parents live in Kwanar Huɗu, a slum area within urban Kano, and who stayed at Sabuwar Ƙofa all year) stated plainly that he did not know how to farm. Some people considered that staying in urban areas all year round would deskill students, and not only in terms of practical agricultural knowledge. One father, for example, confided to me that he wanted his sons to study in rural areas – even though he believed that they would have more time to study in an urban area where no agricultural tasks could distract them. He feared that once his sons had acquired a liking for the bright lights of the city, they would not be able to endure village life and its hardships. To use the language of Bourdieu, he considered that if boys were to handle village life like ‘a fish in water’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant Reference Bourdieu and Wacquant1992: 127), it was necessary to cultivate the appropriate ‘habitus’ carefully, and not to put it at risk by exposing them to city life.

‘Seek knowledge, even as far as China!’

So far in this chapter, I have focused largely on the circumstances of rural peasant households. Yet, almajiri enrolment is not limited to peasant households, which once again underlines the fact that we cannot neglect the significance that religious, moral, and social considerations hold in their own right and independent of underlying material circumstances. The first round of fieldwork, which I conducted from July to September 2009 almost exclusively in urban Kano, coincided with the rainy season. This meant that many students from peasant households had returned to rural areas to help their parents or teachers farm. Yet, I still encountered almajirai in Kano. Rather than being farmers, most of their fathers were engaged in business (as traders in clothes, phones, or goats, owners of provision stores, or bus drivers, for example). Some worked as Qur'anic teachers, and some for the local government. Moreover, not all of those almajirai who leave during the rainy season leave to work in agriculture. Malam Ahmadu, for example, the Qur'anic teacher I lived next door to at Sabuwar Ƙofa, sent some of his students home and did not accept new enrolments until the rains had stopped because he didn't have enough space to shelter them all during the rainy season.

The remainder of this chapter explores the social, moral, and religious aspirations underpinning almajiri enrolment. The first question we must answer is what drives parents to send their sons away rather than enrol them in a local Qur'anic school (of which there are plenty in northern Nigeria). Several practical considerations play a role. Fathers would not necessarily have time to support their sons in their studies, I was told. Having too many friends would distract a boy. Being exposed to different teachers with different strengths, and to new circumstances and new people in general, is believed to broaden a student's knowledge. A well-known hadith (a saying of the Prophet Mohammed) invites believers to search for knowledge even as far as China (see Fortier Reference Fortier1998: 218).

Finally, parents told me that boys at home would be distracted from their studies by their participation in the daily reproductive activities of the household (cf. Fortier Reference Fortier1998: 218 on Mauritania). While this did not match the experience of younger boys – for example, the almajirai I taught in Daho (six to 12 years old) lamented that their workload at Qur'anic school was higher than at home – older youths agreed that as almajirai in the city they had more time for their studies than at home, where family obligations tied up their time. The main explanation for sending boys away, however, can be found in the pedagogical expectations underpinning the system.

Self-reliance and provider roles

Boyden et al. (Reference Boyden, Ling and Myers1998) indicate that the path to adulthood in many societies is secured by making contributions to the good of the family or household rather than through children's evolving autonomy, as Western thinking has it (see also Durham Reference Durham, Cole and Durham2008). Children are expected to increasingly take over responsibilities for others as they grow up, rather than being gradually ‘released’ into an independent adult life. In socio-economic contexts where families often depend on the economic and/or labour contributions of all their members, including the youngest, it is essential to socialise children into contributor roles.

While both girls and boys are socialised into such roles in northern Nigeria, expectations vary with gender. Whereas girls are trained to become homemakers and mothers, boys are expected to become self-reliant and responsible breadwinners. Accordingly, the almajiri system encourages boys to learn early on to take care of themselves and of others materially and financially. Rather than being provided for by their teachers and parents, the students contribute towards their teacher's livelihood and bring presents when they visit home. Being left without means of sustenance is intended not only to ‘steel’ the character, but also to teach a boy how to stand on his own feet.

I gained the impression that for young almajirai – on whom not too many expectations rest – helping others was first and foremost an opportunity to receive credit and praise. I hardly ever got the chance to carry my bag myself from the malam's house in Daho to the Islamiyya school building where I gave literacy and numeracy classes to his almajirai, as one of the boys would always insist that he be allowed to carry it for me. When I asked what the boys would do if they had a lot of money, Nazifi, aged about nine, blurted out that he would buy new Sallah (Eid) clothes for his father! Sadisu (aged 14 in 2009), who studied at the Qur'anic school next door to where I was living during my stays in urban Kano, clearly took pride in being able to shoulder the burden of providing for himself:

For older almajirai, the expectation from families that they would contribute to the household was somewhat more burdensome. They were torn between their own wish to live up to these expectations and a genuine enjoyment of the provider role on the one hand, and the implications such demands had on their resources and room for manoeuvre on the other. When I enquired whether anyone in his family would be able to support Naziru (aged 17) financially in his plans to enrol in boko school, Sadisu (aged 16), who was also present, explained that ‘it was now time for them to bring rather than take from their parents’. Pressure to support families back home is particularly intense for boys without older male siblings. After his father's death, it fell on Auwal (aged about 18) as the eldest son to till his family's fields, and he returned home even though he had just gained a hard-won place in secondary school.

‘Proper’ personhood

Abdullahi, a participant in our film project, implies in this playful narration of his life course that Qur'anic school played a vital role in socialising him in his religious duties, as well as in teaching him how to become a suitable social being. The two are largely inseparable. In Islam, the umma is considered collectively responsible for the conduct of all its members. The religious transgressions of an individual thus constitute a social problem to some extent. While the training of both boys and girls aims at forming disciplined Muslims, the religious education of boys is considered more consequential and therefore given greater weight. Upon marriage, it is the men who will be held responsible for the conduct of their wives and children.

Many Muslims in northern Nigeria consider that Islam requires complete and unquestioning submission to God's laws. Many ‘traditional’ Muslims also view respectful behaviour and obedience towards one's social superiors (manya) as an extension of such religious compliance, and a necessary ingredient to ensure social order (see, e.g., Last Reference Last2000b; Ware Reference Ware2014).Footnote ¹⁸ Several fathers commented to me that boys were sent out to study the Qur'an so that they would learn ‘respect’ for their parents, as experiencing the hardship and strict discipline of the Qur'anic school makes them appreciate what they have at home. The perceived ability of a teacher to ensure ‘character training’ or a ‘moral upbringing’ (tarbiyya)Footnote ¹⁹ and to teach religion (addini – in an applied sense, going beyond mere Qur'anic recitation)Footnote ²⁰ was central to my respondents’ accounts of what they considered to be good schools.

In the northern Nigerian context, children are seen as ‘beings who require disciplining in order to become human’ (Last Reference Last2000b: 374). Undisciplined children are perceived as animal-like, as ‘they simply sleep, eat and drink’ (ibid.: 374). Without ‘external shaping’ in the form of discipline and physical hardship, including physical punishment, ‘a child is scarcely human, and certainly not a proper Muslim’ (ibid.: 376; see also Fortier Reference Fortier1998; Schildkrout Reference Schildkrout2002 [1978]; for comparable notions of childhood in Western history, see Jenks Reference Jenks1996: 70ff.; Valentine Reference Valentine1996).

Language reflects this concept of personhood. Nafisa, for example, said of her grandson Yunusa that she was planning to take him to Qur'anic school as an almajiri so that he would ‘become a person’ (ya zama mutum). One qualifies as a ‘proper’ human being only once one is capable of (and responsible for) following God's laws. Young children (below the age of about seven), on the other hand, are incapable of committing either faults or sins (cf. Starrett Reference Starrett1998: 103).Footnote ²¹ When I asked a group of young people in Albasu to enlighten me about Hausa swear words, the older youths present told me that they could not pronounce any for me without putting at stake whatever rewards they had previously earned in the sight of God. The little boys present, however, could say swear words with impunity, I learned, and eventually I got the examples I was asking for.

Many ‘tradition’-oriented adults in northern Nigeria are concerned that demonstrations of love may ‘damage’ a child's character. Parents are particularly afraid that their deep affection may lead to the child being spoilt, a sentiment that gives rise to a ‘strong tradition of public restraint or emotional reserve’ between parents and children (Last Reference Last2000b: 378). While parents are concerned about avoiding ‘spoiling’ – and ensuring the disciplining – of both boys and girls, the practices through which they seek to ensure good outcomes vary. Girls are usually kept closer to home, although both boys and girls may be fostered with relatives (see, e.g., Goody Reference Goody1982; Bledsoe Reference Bledsoe1990). Additionally, boys may be sent to Qur'anic school to ensure that they are exposed to the necessary hardship. The distance ensures that parents do not interfere, and makes it difficult for boys to escape from school and run back home.

While it is recognised that parents are reluctant to be too harsh, this is perceived as a weakness. One of the malamai I was close to explained his decision to teach almajirai rather than students from the neighbourhood: in his experience, nearby parents could not help but interfere in his teaching. Rather than blaming them, he took this to be a structural problem that could be solved by sending boys away. One student claimed that one studies better away from home because, at home, enjoying one's parents’ support, one may simply decide to drop out of school if one feels treated badly by the teacher.

Not only most fathers but also several of the mothers I interviewed stressed discipline and hardship as their motives for advocating that a boy be enrolled as an almajiri. Mairo, one of three wives of a poor farmer in Albasu, for example, hoped to secure her husband's permission to enrol her seven-year-old son Muhammad as an almajiri. Of the five children she had given birth to, three had died early. When I got to know her, she had a little daughter, still a toddler, and Muhammad. To make sure that he would acquire good manners (tarbiyya) and religious knowledge, she wanted to put aside her own strongly felt desire to be close to him.

The fact that many of the fathers enrolling their sons as almajirai have gone through the system themselves – and have come out on the other side ‘unscathed’ – lends it a certain legitimacy (Last Reference Last2000b: 375; see also Ware Reference Ware2014: 43). Several fathers told me how much they themselves had suffered as students; however, they argued that the conditions nowadays are slightly less tough – people are richer and give more, more profitable activities are available to the almajirai to earn a living, particularly in the cities, and the physical infrastructure of the schools has improved. While being relieved that the deprivation nowadays is not quite as harsh as when they were students, fathers made a conscious choice to expose their sons to hardship.

It is interesting to note that the almajirai only partly bought into discourses describing children as inherently feral and in need of disciplining. The young almajirai at Sabuwar Ƙofa with whom I conducted research in 2009 portrayed almajiri enrolment as a strategy designed to remove boys from problematic influences. While they also brought up the danger of becoming spoilt as a reason for enrolment, they linked this danger mainly to specific external corrupting influences rather than to some intrinsic characteristics of children, thus shifting the blame away from themselves, and providing a reason why not every child has to become an almajiri if he wants to escape ‘spoiling’. Naziru, for instance, suggests that parents enrol small boys as almajirai

When conducting group interviews with younger almajirai, I sometimes encouraged them to enact particular situations to make it easier for them to convey their experiences. In a small role play about almajiri enrolment, the boys invented a drunkard, a gambler, and a criminal as corrupting influences justifying a father's decision to send his son away.

While hardship is considered desirable to some extent, parents nonetheless try to ensure appropriate care arrangements on a practical level, for instance by placing boys with relatives: I met almajirai who were related to their malam, or to one of his wives. I also met boys who were sent with siblings (or to a school where an elder sibling studied already), or at least with boys from the same village. In all the schools where I conducted research, there were ‘clusters’ of students who came from the same area or village. Yet, while the senior stationary malamai with whom almajirai stay during the rainy season are likely to be known to parents, in many cases the young malamai or gardawa who take them on migratory tours during the dry season are not.

Finally, parents tend to take into account their sons’ temperament and ability to withstand hardship when making enrolment decisions (see Last Reference Last2000b: 382). I befriended a family in Albasu, for example, whose oldest son had been enrolled as an almajiri for some 13 years before returning emaciated and without having acquired much Qur'anic knowledge. The second eldest son was subsequently enrolled in boko school, and almajiri education became a consideration only when he could not secure secondary school admission. The family's third son, on the other hand, a charming but mischievous boy, was to be sent to almajiri school for some time so that he would take his secular school studies seriously afterwards. For similar reasons, Larabiyu enrolled her son (from whose father she was divorced) as an almajiri after he returned from his father's place, where he had lived for some time. Nobody had taken care of his education there, and therefore he had got into the habit of secular school vagrancy, she told me. She hoped an episode of almajiri enrolment would get him back on the straight and narrow. Moreover, she did not have the money to enrol him in a secular school at the time.

In brief, almajiri education is often chosen as a means to inculcate a particular ‘habitus’ in boys. It is not an inevitable stage of boyhood let alone of childhood – indeed, it is deemed inappropriate for girls – although it certainly draws on narratives about the educational nature of hardship and pain that are widespread and well-known in Hausaland.

Privation, pain, and punishment

Physical exertion and even pain do not necessarily carry negative connotations in Hausaland. Pain is considered a necessary and inevitable part of daily life: people may not even make an effort to avoid it,Footnote ²² and some forms of pain are considered educational. With the exception of very young children, children crying from physical or emotional pain are usually quickly hushed. For example, when Khalidu (aged about eight), who had just learned that his sister had died in childbirth, started crying, his teacher told him to be quiet, and to pray for her. When I tried to console a young almajiri who had injured himself, putting my arm around him and asking about the pain, the boys standing nearby, somewhat bewildered, laughed at the situation. When I talked about circumcision with some of the youths involved in the film project, I wondered what they considered preferable: to circumcise when a boy was still an infant, or when he had grown up a little. They agreed that an infant would suffer less, but that remembering the pain involved was important for a boy to learn to empathise with others.

The almajirai's deprived living conditions, and especially the fact that many young students beg daily for food, have often been decried as problematic and detrimental to their studies. Yet, among supporters of the system and segments of the rural population more widely, a certain degree of physical discomfort, including hunger, is considered necessary for one's mind to stay alert and focused (cf. Ware Reference Ware2014: 8). Eating to full satisfaction every day is considered to numb the mind, and eating for pleasure is also a privilege reserved for the powerful. ‘Eating’ (ci) plays a central role in metaphors of power, the word ‘eating’ being used to describe situations such as winning a victory, conquering a place, or having sexual intercourse with a woman (see Last Reference Last2000b: 374; see also Robson Reference Robson2006). An important implication of marriage, which marks the beginning of respectable adulthood for men, is that one has secure access to the food prepared by one's wife. Young almajirai, conversely, are expected to learn humility and endurance, and therefore they must toil to fill their stomachs with the leftover food they receive when begging.

I saw teachers sharing food with very young almajirai (six- to seven-year-old boys in Daho) in cases when they did not receive anything from begging, and with older students or gardawa who helped them with their teaching load. The large majority of students, however, received food from their malam's house only if they were sick. For the rest of the time, they relied largely on what they (or their fellow students) got from begging.Footnote ²³ Giving and receiving food leftovers is a routine practice in Hausaland. Leftovers cannot be kept: refrigerators are scarce and the electricity supply erratic. When I discussed with the almajirai participating in the film project their opinions on a ban on begging, they raised the question of what would happen to food leftovers if no one came to collect them. That would be ‘almubazzaranci’, they explained: letting food go to waste unnecessarily. Eating leftovers is not generally considered demeaning. The malam's wives and I were regularly offered a taste of the food the young almajirai in Daho had brought back from their begging rounds, and occasionally we accepted a handful. Giving and receiving leftovers that have gone off is, of course, a different matter altogether, but according to the almajirai, this is a problem mostly in the urban areas, where some donors have little regard for the almajirai. Suffice to say that for many poor rural parents, accepting that their sons beg for food has very different connotations than it has for Western, urban, or southern Nigerian observers who condemn it as ‘child neglect’ and ‘abuse’.

In addition, while we should not disregard poverty when considering the scruffy appearance of some almajirai, their tattered clothes and bare feet are also to some extent external markers of the humility and asceticism they are supposed to learn and embrace. As Mahmood (Reference Mahmood2005) has argued about veiled women in Egypt, clothing practices are thought to help produce particular desirable subjectivities.

The almajirai's schedule is deliberately designed to be tough. Usually, they start their first lesson after the first morning prayer at dawn and are kept busy until after the evening prayer. Time spent sleeping is time lost to one's studies: this is how Malam Nasiru, whose school in Albasu I visited regularly, justified why he made his students study deep into the night during the dry season, and why he woke them up again after midnight for another study session.Footnote ²⁴ During lessons, students crouch on the floor behind their wooden board, always within reach of the vigilant whip of an older student or assistant teacher (gardi). When a student's concentration slips, a lash will remind him to focus. Pain in this context is used as a ‘technique of memory’ (Last Reference Last2000b: 383), through which ‘truths are seared into the long-term memories of the young’ (ibid.: 384; see also Fortier Reference Fortier1997; Ware Reference Ware2014: 42ff.). But it is not only attention that is policed through physical pain. So are mistakes and misdemeanours. This ties in with wider ideas about punishment and the maintenance of social order in Hausaland.

Last (Reference Last and Das2000c: 328) writes that ‘there is general agreement that severe punishment is just, and that justice is the key characteristic of good government. Preachers and poets alike stress hell and the severity of Allah's judgement…Teachers and adults generally are not expected to spare the rod (or the leg-irons) on the young.’ Furthermore, in times when ‘the world's end [may be] imminent’, the religious umma should police moral trespasses all the more and ‘live extra-righteously now’ (Last Reference Last2009: 1). One almajiri with whom I discussed questions of social and moral order justified the severe corporal punishment included in shari'a law with reference to the even severer punishment offenders had to expect from God: after all, they would be better off in the afterlife if they paid as much of their debts as possible in this world.

As studying is perceived as a religious service and duty, for almajirai it is almost impossible to justify a refusal to learn and study hard if not with reference to a student's laziness and stubbornness. Naziru, for instance, argues that a good student

An interpretation of studying as a personal responsibility towards God also lends even greater legitimacy to students’ relative powerlessness vis-à-vis their teacher. Habibu (aged 11), for instance, in a ‘radio speech’ justifies the physical punishment of students as it is they who will reap the benefits of a successful education:

Nonetheless, none of this prevents the almajirai from passing judgement on what they consider unacceptable punishment, especially with regard to the practices of other almajirai. For example, two of Malam Ahmadu's students (both in their late teens) sneered at Mukhtar, one of their fellow students who was aged about 18 and aspired to become a malam. They argued that if he did not reduce the number of beatings he dealt the three young students under his supervision, he would not be able to make almajirai stay with him (riƙe). They reasoned that one should teach through advice, not through beatings.

Conclusion: like fish in water?

This chapter has sought to understand why boys become almajirai. Using Bourdieu's notion of ‘habitus’, it has explored both the social and economic circumstances in which almajiri education becomes a desirable option for parents, and the cultural and religious discourses through which people justify the enrolment of boys in this education system. I have argued that almajiri education corresponds well to the economic requirements of Sahelian peasant households. The rhythm of Qur'anic schooling synchronises with agricultural work cycles, which means that households can call on the labour of boys and youths enrolled as almajirai during peak work times, and reduce their subsistence burden during times of scarcity. Given how well integrated the almajiri system is with peasant households’ work rhythms, many almajirai acquire agricultural knowledge as a matter of course. However, their acquisition of skills for a rural livelihood has to be assessed against the backdrop of a largely declining rural economy (see Chapter 9).

The almajiri system also offers redress for a number of difficult situations. Many poor households struggle to gain access for their children to ‘modern’ education that is affordable and of acceptable quality. High divorce and maternal mortality rates, as well as rural poverty, make it difficult for some children to stay at home. For adolescent boys and young men struggling to gather the necessary resources to transition into adult life, the almajiri system offers an opportunity to migrate seasonally or permanently to the cities, where petty income opportunities are easier to come by than in rural areas.

While the vagaries of subsistence agriculture, as well as difficult social and economic circumstances, in many instances provide the backdrop against which almajiri education becomes an option, most people explain their decision to enrol boys in the Qur'anic schooling system with reference to the social, moral, and religious dispositions and skills they expect their sons to learn as almajirai. Arguably, the harsh discipline of the Qur'anic school moulds boys into good Muslims, as they learn what it means to show respect and be humble. Incidentally, in an environment where people are expected to subordinate their personal aspirations to socially sanctioned norms and authorities, and where people's plans are frequently thwarted by adverse external circumstances, being able to endure and to accept one's fate are indispensable skills. What is more, hardship is said to train boys in endurance and to teach them to take care of their own needs, and eventually of those of their family, which is a crucial skill for their future roles as breadwinners and heads of families.

Bourdieu's notion of ‘habitus’ captures well the ways in which people seem to make ‘a virtue of necessity’ when foregrounding religious and cultural arguments for almajiri enrolment, while relegating to the background the structural constraints to which they are subjected. Rather than reducing almajiri enrolment to the result of either ‘deprivation’ or ‘fundamentalism/backwardness’, approaching almajiri enrolment through the lens of ‘habitus’ allows us to take seriously people's reasoning about the value of the education they choose, and to simultaneously acknowledge the structural contexts in which such reasoning takes place.

Yet, when thinking about almajiri education through the lens of ‘habitus’, we must be careful not to forget that ‘making a virtue of necessity’ does not prevent people from reflecting critically on the conditions that create this necessity in the first place, or from aspiring to change. If people leave out certain elements in their accounts of almajiri education, we cannot conclude from this that they are not aware of them. The following chapters pay close attention to the role played by negative connotations of poverty, and poor people's struggles to keep up appearances in this context, for the way in which people speak (publicly) about almajiri education.

Second, while material and social circumstances, or what Bourdieu calls the ‘objective conditions’, certainly matter for understanding almajiri enrolment, we have to refrain from assuming a linear or mechanistic relationship between the two. Many people value the moral/social and religious training associated with almajiri education for its own sake. Chapter 8 explores in more detail the religious narratives underpinning almajiri education, and contrasts these with alternative religious narratives, drawing attention to the social worlds or ‘fields’ within which they have currency.

Finally, in the introduction to this chapter, I queried what happens to the ‘habitus’ supporting almajiri education when it is taken out of the – mostly rural – contexts in which it appears ‘like a fish in water’. What happens when the almajirai come into contact with ‘social worlds’ that are at odds with those of which they are the ‘product’? And what are the implications of such disjunctures for social reproduction and the perpetuation of this ‘habitus’? The next chapters pursue this theme further. Following the almajirai into town, I explore their encounters with people from very different social backgrounds, and trace how such encounters affect the almajirai's perspectives of themselves and their education system, as well as their future aspirations. The next chapter starts off this enquiry by looking at the almajirai's experiences in urban middle- and upper-class households, where they often work as domestic helpers.