2: Entangled Complexities of Global Coloniality, Gendered Burdens, and Contemporary Education

Chapter 2 begins with the experiences of Fatsani and Yamikani, both who are young mothers, highlighting the “othering” experiences that pregnant and mothering students go through in formal schools that push out learners like them from the school system or force them to walk out. Connecting the anecdotes to colonial legacies, this chapter provides a historical analysis of the influences of colonialism on the constructions of the human and the hierarchization of mankind stemming from imperialism that subsequently influenced schooling post-pregnancy. The chapter also interrogates the colonial discourses of sexual morality conceptualized within the imperialist political and religious mission for bio-power to maintain order and to civilize the non-Western “Other.” In juxtaposing participant narratives—such as those of Fatsani and Yamikani—and colonial conceptualization of humanhood and girlhood sexuality in schooling, this chapter engages in an intentional decolonial tactic to interrogate, challenge, and disrupt Euro-hegemonic dominance and colonial logics rooted to marginalize, feminize, racialize, and objectify the non-European “Other” in international education. The chapter also proposes Ubuntu justice for schooling post-pregnancy as an African Indigenous perspective for facilitating socially just responses to the challenges that pregnant learners and student mothers experience in the context of Malawi.