Tracking Aspirations: Neoliberal Education and Mobility for Cambodian Youth

ABSTRACT Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in rural Cambodia, this article focuses on secondary students who aspire to social and spatial mobility. It examines how a subject‐based tracking system intersects with other facets of the educational landscape to stratify students along class lines. In doing so, it highlights how educational practices rooted in neoliberal logics can bolster some youths' aspirations more than others, but that these inequalities can be masked by discourses of choice.