Young people in contemporary Africa (session organizer)

Recent work on African children and youth highlight how their lives are intersected and dissected by class, age (generation), religion, livelihoods, gender, ethnicity, rural and urban location, social status (e.g. orphanhood), as well as by physical ability and ill-health. Although our understandings of African childhoods and youth are limited, scholars are increasingly engaged in developing debates on young people as social actors, as well as the need to confront the diversity of childhoods and youth – with a view to explore the social and generational categories while substantiating their variations over time and across space. Important methodological developments also highlight an apparent dichotomy between studies that are more global (i.e. those that examine the importance of global processes in shaping children’s positions) and those that have more local concerns (i.e. studies which show how children are important to create their own cultures, livelihoods and life worlds). This session calls for papers that seek to entangle the ways in which young people in Africa continue to fare their lives and livelihoods in a context of rapid social and political change. The session is broad in its scope in order to accommodate a wide range of papers from different fields. It aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue on how young people may be viewed both as actors in and victims of socio-cultural and politico-economic transformations. Papers that draw insight from research with children and young people on the ways in which inter- and intra-generational relationships, household composition, source of livelihoods, epidemiology and gender shape the experiences of growing up in changing Africa are particularly welcome. An added aim of session is to create a platform for the formation of a Nordic Network of African Children and Youth Research. Convenor: Dr Tatek Abebe, Norwegian Centre for Child Research, NTNU. E-mail tatek.abebe@svt.ntnu.no