How Descent‐Based Hierarchies and Youth Culture Shape Secondary School Engagement in Senegal

Research on the effects of mass schooling on social cleavages in Africa ignores descent‐based hierarchies despite their affecting 218 million people on the continent. In contrast, I show how pursuit of social mobility and honor to overcome descent‐based discrimination underpinned Haalpulaar parents’ and youths’ engagement with secondary school in Senegal. This included youth developing a counter‐culture oppositional to school values through appropriation of popular culture, a rarely documented outcome of EFA in the Global South.