Browsing by Subject "youth"

This thesis answers to a question “Why adolescent girls drop out of school in Northern Uganda?” In Uganda, approximately 70% of the children drop out of public school before 7th grade, the final year of primary school. In northern Uganda, girls drop out of school in more significant numbers than boys, and it happens around the age when girls reach puberty. Northern Uganda is also a particular location because it is recovering from long conflict, affecting strongly the whole population living in the area. The thesis is based on two-month ethnographic fieldwork in northern Uganda during the spring of 2015. To answer the main research question this study seeks to analyse it through taking a look how the school, the community and the girls themselves experience and talk about dropping out, education and growing up in the current post-conflict state of the social life. The thesis argues that the dropout rate is linked to the adolescence as life-stage of becoming an adult that is making the girls to make decisions about the future. The analysis is done through three different perspectives – the educational, societal and personal narratives of the youth. The first perspective is the education and schooling in northern Uganda. It explores the concept of ’educated person’ by Levinson and Holland through sexual education and gender in education. The study shows that Ugandan public primary and secondary education is deriving its ideas and understanding of educated person from the national curriculum, which often conflict with the local concepts of the educated person in the Acholi community, influencing the blamed and real reasons for dropping out. The second perspective looks into the community and the societal pressures the girls are facing when growing up. It will describe family, kinship, marriage and gender in post-conflict context and show how in these areas of life, the past conflict, “loss of culture”, generational conflicts and subsequent disobedience are presented as reasons behind the challenges to stay in school. The third perspective tells the stories of the girls met and talked to during the ethnographic fieldwork in Northern Uganda. It answers the question “What is happening in the life of a girl when she drops out of school?”. It is argued that the girls take actions of a gendered agency to further their lives and become adults. Thus, dropping out of school cannot just be explained as a simple event just suddenly happening without their own will. It will further answer the question “What makes some girls stay in school?” to show how those girls still in school manage the crosscurrents of growing up in Acholiland. The thesis argues that the girls in northern Uganda are active appropriators and social agents who through their own actions contest, struggle and penetrate the structures in their society while also at the same time reproduce them. In Northern Uganda, both the community and the state together with different international agencies will have plans and expectations for the girls’ future. The study shows how the girls navigate the school, community and peer expectations and sociocultural and economic structures to stay or finally drop out of school. These structures are state organised and aid-infused formal schooling and society in amidst of post-conflict recovery which creates a framework where the girls are acting. The school presents the modern and globally orientated educated person, and in contrast to it, the community is looking for to restore ‘traditional’ way of life. It is argued that these two sides are often in conflict and in the middle of this conflict the girls act and solve their way out of it, looking for adulthood and gaining respectable status in the society. The schools, the community and even sometimes the development actors see the girls as passively following the things they will encounter. The thesis will show that they are not. The girls either stay in school or drop out of it, but more often as a consequence of their own decisions and actions than passively because the school or the community could not support them. It is demonstrated that dropping out of school looks more of line a tactic for the future as a respectable grown-up than mere problem to be solved.

This study discusses the importance of artistic practices and community arts centres for development understood as a process of social and individual emancipation. Specifically, the study looks at emancipation from the point of view of overcoming social and psychological hindrances to the autonomy of an individual. The empirical case under scrutiny is a community centre in Johannesburg, South Africa, its arts and crafts project (ACP) and one of its drama projects. The study asks, what is the role of the projects in project participants’ lives, and what kinds of spaces the projects are. Initially, I assumed that the role of the creative action taking place in the projects, as critical theory suggests, would be substantial for the participants, because of the “learning by doing” taking place in the projects, and because of bigger “ownership” of one’s own doing, when compared to, for example, school environments. The research material is derived from 18 interviews, observations, written products of the projects, and my field and research diaries, which compose the text for hermeneutic analysis. The research questions were developed and further answered through a hermeneutic process of dialogue with this text. The analysis results in new ‘facts’ that answer the research questions, as is the nature of results in hermeneutic studies. These facts, or, the findings, support the assumption about the importance of the method of learning by doing, and ownership of one’s doing, but turn the emphasis towards the social context of the projects. The projects had a great impact in the project participants’ lives in two intertwined spheres. These are: 1) sphere of learning, and 2) sphere of “feeling at home”. The projects enhanced the participants’ feeling of freedom. One of the main reasons for this was the non-discriminatory social environment of the projects, especially regarding non-discrimination based on socio-economic class. In the study, I argue that both projects contributed to the emancipation of their participants. The theoretical framework of development as emancipation, which is discussed with the empirical part of the study, is founded on the Freirean concept of humanisation, the capabilities approach as developed by Martha Nussbaum, and the idea of orienting towards objects formulated by Sara Ahmed. The study is an addition to the recent body of research on community arts centres in South Africa, conducted by South African researchers such as Gerard Hagg, Eben Lochner, Thamsanqa Mzaku, and Zanele Madiba.

More than a half of the population in Southern Africa is young. In Mozambique, majority of the population lives in the rural area, gaining their livelihoods in subsistence farming. The growing urban population in the region is mainly occupied in the informal sector, where rights of the workers are not considered. This work is about young people and their opportunities to find employment and get settled in normal life. This work is based on interviews of young people from the poor neighborhood of Chamanculo in Maputo, Mozambique, and young people living in the streets in Nairobi, Kenya. Despite of differences between these two groups, they face similar challenges and prejudices. Also their dreams and strategies to reach these dreams do not differ much. The material is collected over a time span of over two years during monitoring trips to NGOs working for empowerment os marginalized youth. In addition to young people, material includes interviews with staff of NGOs working with marginalized youth, and representatives of respective government officers and school staff. Different from Western societies, being young is not considered a privilege in Southern Africa. Instead it’s a period in a life when possibilities for influencing and participating in social life are limited. Status of an adult is gained after establishing a family, and securing income that is enough to sustain oneself and his family. Especially young men are expected to be able to provide for their wife and the family. In a situation when access to decent jobs and income is limited, young people from difficult circumstances are easily stuck in a situation in which they do not have the option of becoming fully recognized adults. Weak educational background and connections to formal economy create obstacles for poor young people to integrate into formal society and labor force. In this work, the challenge of becoming adult is studied using concepts of child agency, agency, social navigation and capability. Agency of children and youth is a relatively new topic of studies, because decision-making has until recently been considered the responsibility of adults. However, recent studies show that children already in young age make decisions concerning their education, selection of future profession and entrance into vocational training. Young people make their decisions based on the information available for them about their societies, in this case especially about labor markets and income earning possibilities. Navigating in insecure environment requires continuous monitoring and keeping eyes open for any opportunity. Often youth in difficult situation have to consider both immediate survival and long term plans in the same time. Chances of young people from poor background are limited not only due to economic hardship, but also because of lacking social capital and networks. Possibility to choose between different options is often limited, and in many cases it’s necessary to accept any opportunity that turns up. Made choices are evaluated continuously; and corrective actions taken if a decision does not lead to a desirable outcome. Youth from poor neighborhood of Chamanaculo in Maputo tell that they search their models somewhere else, because the environment does not support education, and abuse of alcohol and drugs is common. In the same time, young people who have little formal education are in difficult position on the labor market, and those with less formal education end up in informal jobs. While informal sector is widespread. Even the poorest youth are usually aware of this, and employment in the formal sector is the ideal for most. Young people also dream of continuing their studies, and continuing to higher education after completing vocational training and earning some money. Costs related to formal education and lacking social capital prevent young people from poor families to pursue this dream. Especially young men who have grown up as street children face fear and discrimination. For youth from the margins of the society, placement on a training course is not enough, but they also need moral support and counseling to prepare them for the social life at workplace. When this support is available, they have all the possibilities to succeed, and most youth are employed after traineeship. Usually girls are more vulnerable than boys, and their opportunities in earning income are more limited than for young men. While young men from poor neighborhoods are easily labeled criminals, girls with the same background are often considered prone to prostitution. Selection of trades in vocational training is strongly gendered, and young women end up in professions that are less paid than male dominated ones.