Emerging Educational Subjectives in the Global Periphery

In the global north the idea of rurality takes on a particular inflection. Northern places, whichare often considered to be rural and 'isolated', have often been marginalized in metrocentricdiscourses of development. Associated with these peripheral places are equally marginalbackward, rough and uneducated identity stereotypes that have been well explored in the ruralstudies literature. But things are changing. In this chapter, focusing on the Canadian andScandinavian contexts, we argue that contemporary resource development has complicatedestablished discourses of modernity and that places outside the metropolis are increasinglycentral to national development agendas. We investigate how contemporary forms of resourceproduction, and the identity structures that they facilitate, integrate into emerging nationalcultural imaginaries and educational policy narratives in and about northern and rural regions aseither utopian or dystopian constructions. This in turn leads to discursive emphasis on retoolingeducation systems in rural and remote areas. This reassertion and reconfiguration of the ruralsignals a need for a policy shift that recognises the centrality of modern rural regions to nationaldevelopment strategies. At the same time we interrogate the consequences of the entanglementof traditional primary industries such as fishing and farming with emerging associations withmining and oil and gas development. In Canada and in Scandinavia the conflation of historic national identity with rural resourceproduction are key metaphors in the cultural imaginary. Simultaneously, places outside themetropolis are increasingly central to national economic development strategy. This has led tonew concerns about education in rural and remote regions aimed at creating new worker/subjects for emerging forms of technologically enhanced and increasingly globalised resourcedevelopment requiring different knowledge and competencies, Drawing on research in AtlanticCanada and in Northern Norway, we interrogate the educational and identity consequences ofcurrent policy discourse to find that contemporary change forces a reimagining of the educatedsubject and a respatialising of the field in which s/he is imagined to work.In 2011, the Canadian federal government announced that a major C$25+ billion contractfor the construction of warships had been awarded to Halifax and the shipyards owned by theIrving family. The response was something akin to rejoicing in the streets and the CBCheadlines on 19 October 2011 read: Jubilation as Halifax shipyard awarded contract' (CBCNews, 2011). Premier Darrel Dexter gleefully intoned that this day would go down as one ofthe proudest in the history of the province and that thousands of people who had left NovaScotia for work in western and central Canada could return home to stable employment. Byearly 2015 no steel was being cut, a brief real estate boom in Halifax had long fizzled out, andthe Bank of Montreal (BMO) reported the province's continuing 'demographic drain', theweakest home sales in 16 years, decreasing labour force participation rates, and the continuinglure of high wages in other provinces (Bank of Montreal, 2014). In Norway a similar story has to do with the emerging oil and gas industry in the northernpart of the country- regarding how the global oil industry affects life in geographically remoteareas. The northern part of Norway has traditionally had a peripheral position in relation to thenational centre located in the south, and has been regarded as an outpost. Fisheries used to bethe most important industry in the region, and structural changes in resource management aswell as the cyclical nature of the availability of fish have led to recurring crises for small-scalefisheries (Jentoft, 1993). A population scattered across harsh and inhospitable landscapes, anindustrial structure related to resource-based industries such as fishing and farming, and a lowereducational level than the rest of the national population were all qualities that have served togive this part of the country status as somewhat inferior, backward and even primitive andunderdeveloped. Against this backdrop, the petroleum industry created new optimism inNorthern Norway. In this chapter we focus primarily on how development, as described above, affects youngpeople growing up in these regions, especially in relation to education. What happens whensmall, local communities are transformed into booming industrial sites or hubs for the oil andgas industry with global significance? One major impact in both Northern Norway and NovaScotia is related to changes in the structure and dynamics of the labour markets.Today, labour mobility in the context of mobile modernity (Forsey, 2015) results in whatCorbett (2010) calls 'deployment' in and out of areas of capital expansion. This is now amultigenerational way of life in some peripheral regions. What is new in both Nova Scotia andin Northern Norway is the increasingly sharp call for a new kind of worker who issimultaneously mobile and stable, tough and educated. Apart from the hype of oil and ships,we are interested here in the kind of educated subject imagined for the emerging industrialmachinery of contemporary development in rural and remote parts of the global north.Accompanying these development initiatives are new educational imaginaries that focus onSTEM subject areas (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and technical skills.At the same time, a parallel discourse that focuses on the need for appropriately educatedlabour that will remain in 'peripheral' areas has complicated contemporary educationaldiscussions both in Canada and in Norway.

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