ABSTRACT
Editorial introductions to special issues have a number of generic features. According to stock photographs, rural education is overwhelmingly connected to developing countries. Frosh explains that the ‘success’ of a photograph produces ‘generic images’, calling forth but offering limited interpretations of social categories such as, for example, ‘The Family’, ‘Work’ and, in our case, ‘Rural Education’. Robyn Mayes and Ruth McAreavey explore mobilities in rural education attending labour migration in new immigration destinations in rural Australia and Northern Ireland. The labelling of rural youth, and their employment and educational choices, as problems are further examined in the final paper by Nicole Gerarda Power. In this special issue, authors speak back to the stock-images of ‘rural education’ as being largely a concern to developing countries or to developed nations only if considered historically. Collectively the types of robust, complicated, and multifaceted imaginings and experiences of the confluence between ‘rural’ and ‘education’ documented within these pages invite further engagement and investigation.
