Local students, global minds. The daily lives and future plans of students at a secondary school in Rwanda.

Abstract

This thesis describes the daily lives and future plans of students at a secondary school in Kigali, Rwanda. By doing this, it is shown how large processes such as globalization take shape in a specific local context. Although the students are confined to one place during most parts of the year, this thesis shows how their imaginative world exceeds the school and their country. They are able to imagine a different life in the future than they have now. Globalization provides them with restrictions as well as possibilities. By examining the daily lives and future plans of these students, it is shown that the lives of young people in a global era is full of contradictions. Notions of agency and dependency are not mutually exclusive, but are both present at the same time.