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This article draws on recent research (2017–20) into the livelihoods and imagined futures of rural youth in four communities in southern Nigeria. The research involved observations, sex-segregated focus group discussions and individual interviews. Taking up insights from sociologists of education and work, our analysis shows how rural youth simultaneously navigated schooling, farming, low-paid vocational work and family obligations in ways that were highly gendered. We show the gulf between youth's daily lives and their imagined futures, and how their desires for better lives, whether through 'white-collar' work or expanded farming activities, often involved moving to more 'civilised' or 'developed' contexts. Commitment to family nevertheless ran through youth's narratives, in ways that reflected a deeply gendered, sexual economy. We conclude by highlighting the relevance of a connected sociology that embraces postcolonial and feminist scholarship to advance future studies of rural youth, gender and work in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of different nationalisms in an increasingly unequal and neoliberal world makes predictions about the dawn of a post-national, global society seem both incongruous and fraught with Eurocentric occlusions. In response, we present a postcolonial analysis of research into Muslim youth narratives of nation in Northern Nigeria. This highlights the continued significance of nation for youth as well as the historical fractures – both internal and external – that infused their identity narratives. We further show the entanglement of nation and religion in youth imaginaries, and their anti-colonial ambivalences, notably with respect to gender reforms. Our analysis calls for a sociology of nation that goes beyond a modern framing and instead attends to the agonistic affective relations through which national imaginaries are constructed; the historical sutures that were intrinsic to the creation of postcolonial nations and their enduring persistence as points of fracture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on our recent research into Muslim youth identities to consider theoretical and methodological issues with respect to gender and Muslim women's agency. Western constructions of Muslim women often portray them in essentialised ways as subordinated and without agency. We take up alternative theoretical frameworks that illuminate the limitations of modern understandings of the self and agency, and in particular their problematic association of agency with autonomy. These alternative frameworks also alert us to the possibilities of a different 'ethics of the self' in which cultivation of Islamic values and submission to the will of God can involve agonistic work on the self which is not without agency. They prompt us to consider the methodological limitations of our research approach, in particular how this agonistic work on the self could readily be flattened and rendered invisible within a focus group discussion. We reflect on the kinds of research spaces which could have been more productive for a richer portrayal of Muslim women's agency. We then turn to our data to explore the complex entanglements of our participants' submission and agency, indicating the different ways female youth assumed, negotiated, and contested 'subordinated' identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introductory paper to this special edition provides an overview of the multi-country research project on Muslim youth identities upon which all the papers draw. It includes outlines of its methodological and theoretical frameworks and its rationale. Using a case study approach, the research explored the identity narratives of Muslim youth in the four socio-political contexts of Pakistan, Senegal, Nigeria and Lebanon, each of which have distinctive post-colonial histories. In each context we explored how youth performed and constructed their identities with reference to intersecting discourses of nation, religion and gender. The data was collected with the support of local researchers through female and male focus group discussions which sought to privilege youth voices. Our analysis drew upon feminist, poststructural and postcolonial theorists (e.g. Butler, Foucault, Hall, Said), who understand identities to be constituted through difference. Taking up this theoretical stance, we highlight the axes of difference that were integral to youth identity formations, discussing these with reference to internal and external 'others'. By attending to youth voices and their shifting discourses of allegiance and difference, the research provides a counter to the stigmatisation and misrepresentation of Muslim youth within much Western media. Our analyses emphasise the ways that youth identities are constructed within their particular socio-historical, postcolonial contexts and the contingencies of their local social relations, while also acknowledging the interpenetration of the global and the local. The introductory paper concludes with an overview of six articles which provide cross-case analyses that address key themes emerging from our data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the discursive characteristics of peer assessment interactions, drawing upon recent research into formative assessment within a task design involving extended project‐based work tackled in groups by pupils. Case studies were conducted within two schools in socially deprived areas of Scotland. They included classroom observation, digital video and audio data collection, and a series of interviews with pupils and teachers. The task design created opportunities for interdisciplinary, collaborative learning and generated strong pupil engagement. However, a disjuncture is seen between the conflictual characteristics of peer assessment, which are suggested to have gendered and social class dimensions, and the discourses of teamwork and community‐building that were privileged in the classrooms observed. Although recognised more in research conversations, the article argues that teachers could be better supported in considering how social class and gender are implicated in peer assessment and in developing classroom discourse that addresses social equity issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]