The intersection of caste, social exclusion and educational opportunity in rural Punjab

• We examine the inter-relationship between educational opportunity and social structures in rural Punjab.
• We use capability approach to human development, Whitley’s (2005) descriptive framework, and Bourdieu’s social critical theory to discuss the findings.
• We find that low-caste household children are inhibited from educational opportunity because of caste as a social conversion factor working at individual, social and institutional level.
• The processes of exclusion were manifest across socioeconomic, temporal, spatial, social and institutional planes.
• The paper argues that educational policies and educational provision should be planned keeping in view the political economy of specific contexts.

The policies directed towards increasing access to education, often ignore how the political economy of local social structures can configure educational opportunity for the marginalized. This paper reports key findings of a qualitative, multiple-case study that explored caste-based social exclusion and educational opportunity in rural Punjab, Pakistan. Social exclusion was conceptualized within Sen’s capability approach and analysed under multiple dimensions of social exclusion suggested by Whitley (2005), and Bourdieu’s social critical theory. The data from seventy-two low and high caste parents, school heads and focus group interviews, reveal evidence of caste based social exclusion. This refracted into ‘active’ and ‘passive’ forms of institutional exclusion (Sen, 2000), across temporal and spatial planes. It also resulted in micro-level exclusionary processes within schools and the self deselection of the most stigmatized from education.