'Making it Bit by Bit, then You Rise'? : Social Mobility and Vocational Training as Moral Education in Urban Sierra Leone

This study investigates the experiences of those learning tailoring and trading in urban Sierra Leone, examining why they engage in training, what is basically taught, and the training outcomes. It includes ethnographic fieldwork on vocational training schools and apprenticeships in workplaces, and also investigates less articulated on-the-job learning processes, which have been little studied in previous research. I find that learners undertake their training with the primary aim of achieving social mobility; however, neither of these forms of training generally leads to a sufficient and reliable enough income to realize this aim to the desired extent, due to the lack of remunerated employment opportunities and the fact that access to paid work is largely contingent on an individual’s pre-existing social and economic capital. Instead, I suggest, the different forms of training serve more fundamentally as a form of moral education. I argue that they help to develop certain personal moral traits and to alleviate society’s concerns about ‘immoral’ idle youth.