To leave? To stay? To move? Mobilities and roots of students from rural secondary schools in Entre Ríos (Argentina)

Abstract

We aim to understand the future projections of young students in rural secondary schools in relation to their spatial (im)mobilities. To this end, we analyze ethnographic field notes and materials produced through a playful, pedagogical, and communicative approach with students in their final year at two rural secondary schools in the central-western region of Entre Ríos (Argentina). We focus on the connection between what we call the (im)mobilities projected by these young people, their daily (im)mobilities between rural spaces and nearby “towns”, and the residential mobilities rooted in their family histories, which are shaped by unequal social and gender roles. From this perspective, we problematize the dichotomy between “leaving” (to the “town” or the city) and “staying” that is hegemonic in everyday school life, and we maintain that the construction of roots among young people is not necessarily an option opposed to the needs, possibilities and desires to move, but rather that there are diverse ways of projecting a future linked to rurality that cannot be understood from binary views that oppose the countryside to the city.