Youth Inequality And Social Change In The Global South

This book gathers international and interdisciplinary work on youth studies from the Global South, exploring issues such as continuity and change in youth transitions from education to work; contemporary debates on the impact of mobility, marginalization and violence on young lives; how digital technologies shape youth experiences; and how different institutions, cultures and structures generate a diversity of experiences of what it means to be young. The book is divided into four broad thematic sections: (a) Education, work and social structure; (b) Identity and belonging; (c) Place, mobilities and marginalization; and (d) Power, social conflict and new forms of political participation of youth.

Ninety percent of the world's youth live in Africa, Latin America and the developing countries of Asia. Despite this, the field of Youth Studies, like many others, is dominated by the knowledge economy of the Global North. To address these geo-political inequalities of knowledge, The Oxford Handbook of Global South Youth Studies offers a contribution from Southern scholars to remake Youth Studies from its current state, that universalises Northern perspectives, into a truly Global Youth Studies. Contributors from across various regions of the Global South, including from the Diaspora, Indigenous and Aboriginal communities, locate and define "the Global South", articulate the necessity of studying Southern lives to enrich, re-interpret, legitimate and offer symmetry to Youth Studies, and utilize and innovate Southern theory to do so. Eleven concepts are re-imagined and re-presented throughout the Handbook--personhood, intersectionality, violences, de- and post-coloniality, consciousness, precarity, fluid modernities, ontological insecurity, navigational capacities, collective agency and emancipation. The outcome is a series of everyday practices such as hustling, navigating, fixing, waiting, being on standby, silence, and life-writing, that demonstrate how youth living in adversity experiment with and push back against routine and conformity, and how research may support them in these endeavors and, simultaneously, redefine the relationships between knowledge, practice and politics-what the volume editors term "epistepraxis". The Handbook concludes with a nascent charter for a Global Youth Studies of benefit to the world, that no longer excludes, assumes or elides but rather includes new possibilities for representing youth, researching amongst them, and devising policies and interventions to better serve them. This volume is a critical addition to the field of Youth Studies and one that should be of interest to scholars, researchers, and students working in this area in both the Global North and South.

Ninety percent of the world's youth live in Africa, Latin America and the developing countries of Asia. Despite this, the field of Youth Studies, like many others, is dominated by the knowledge economy of the Global North. To address these geo-political inequalities of knowledge, The Oxford Handbook of Global South Youth Studies offers a contribution from Southern scholars to remake Youth Studies from its current state, that universalises Northern perspectives, into a truly Global Youth Studies. Contributors from across various regions of the Global South, including from the Diaspora, Indigenous and Aboriginal communities, locate and define the Global South, articulate the necessity of studying Southern lives to enrich, re-interpret, legitimate and offer symmetry to Youth Studies, and utilize and innovate Southern theory to do so. Eleven concepts are re-imagined and re-presented throughout the Handbook--personhood, intersectionality, violences, de- and post-coloniality, consciousness, precarity, fluid modernities, ontological insecurity, navigational capacities, collective agency and emancipation. The outcome is a series of everyday practices such as hustling, navigating, fixing, waiting, being on standby, silence, and life-writing, that demonstrate how youth living in adversity experiment with and push back against routine and conformity, and how research may support them in these endeavors and, simultaneously, redefine the relationships between knowledge, practice and politics-what the volume editors term epistepraxis. The Handbook concludes with a nascent charter for a Global Youth Studies of benefit to the world, that no longer excludes, assumes or elides but rather includes new possibilities for representing youth, researching amongst them, and devising policies and interventions to better serve them. This volume is a critical addition to the field of Youth Studies and one that should be of interest to scholars, researchers, and students working in this area in both the Global North and South.

This book offers an innovative, interdisciplinary approach to thinking about inequality, and to understanding how inequality is produced and reproduced in the global South. Without the safety net of the various Northern welfare states, inequality in the global South is not merely a socio-economic problem, but an existential threat to the social contract that underpins the democratic state and society itself. Only a response that is firmly grounded in the context of the global South can hope to address this problem. This collection brings together scholars from across the globe, with a particular focus on the global South, to address broad thematic areas such as the conceptual and methodological challenges of measuring inequality; the political economy of inequality in the global South; inequality in work, households and the labour market; and inequalities in land, spaces and cities. The book concludes by suggesting alternatives for addressing inequality in the global South and around the world. The pioneering ideas and theories put forward by this volume make it essential reading for students and researchers of global inequality across the fields of sociology, economics, law, politics, global studies and development studies.

"Woodman and Wyn have produced a text that offers conceptual clarity and real depth on debates in youth studies. The authors skilfully guide us through the main sociological theories on young people and furnish us with sophisticated critiques from which to rethink youth and generation in the contemporary moment." - Professor Anoop Nayak, Newcastle University The promise of youth studies is not in simply showing that class, gender and race continue to influence life chances, but to show how they shape young lives today. Dan Woodman and Johanna Wyn argue that understanding new forms of inequality in a context of increasing social change is a central challenge for youth researchers. Youth and Generation sets an agenda for youth studies building on the concepts of ‘social generation’ and ‘individualisation’ to suggest a framework for thinking about change and inequality in young lives in the emerging Asian Century.

Communities for Social Change: Practicing Equality and Social Justice in Youth and Community Work examines core ideas of social justice and equality that underpin community and youth work. It informs understanding of a range of community concepts and practices that are used to identify practical skills and characteristics that can help to promote equality by challenging injustice. Working with people in different types of community can bring the kind of social change that makes a real and lasting difference. Although justice is a contested notion, Annette Coburn and Sinéad Gormally assert that it is closely interlinked with human rights and equality. A critical examination of contemporary literature draws on educational, sociological, and psychological perspectives, to set community practices within a context for learning that is conversational, critical and informal. Social justice is about identifying and seeking to address structural disadvantage, discrimination, and inequality. The authors assert that by refocusing on process, participation, and collective rights, it is possible to create and sustain social justice. Transformative research paradigms help to produce findings that inspire and underpin political social action, and an analysis of practice-based examples supports the promotion of increased critical consciousness. This makes Communities for Social Change a must-read for anyone studying or teaching community youth work or who is working in communities or with individuals who experience oppression or inequality. If you are committed to teaching and learning about theory and practice that promotes social change for equality and social justice, you will not be disappointed!

This book examines the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa, and how it impacts young people’s civic and political participation today. The edited volume analyses the extent to which young people influence public policies, social, cultural and economic structures, and how on the other hand these young people are influenced by the same structures. It focuses on the politics and agency of youth, and how they impact social change and continuity in the Middle East and North Africa. The book will be of great value to students, scholars and researchers interested in Youth Movements, MENA, Comparative Politics and Political Economy. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Mediterranean Politics.

Contributed papers presented at a seminar held at Colombo in Oct., 1996; with reference to Sri Lanka.