Childhood, Youth Identity, and Violence in Formerly Displaced Communities in Uganda by Victoria Flavia Namuggala

Author:Victoria Flavia Namuggala
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9783319966281
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

5. We Are What We Are Not

Victoria Flavia Namuggala1

(1)Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda

Victoria Flavia Namuggala

Email: [email protected]

I would say a youth is not an adult. Neither are they children. They are not independent yet not entirely dependent on any one. They hate getting instructions yet they don’t know what to do. Their definition is vague… Key Informant.

Introduction

In this chapter, I expound on the intersectional nature of the social category of the youth. The youth tend to belong to various categories simultaneously, which consequently places them nowhere in particular hence lacking belonging. Because the youth are “everywhere”, local community uses dominant categorization of children and adults to explain what the youth are. What falls outside these two dominant categories describes generally who the youth are. This is because the youth cannot entirely identify with any of the socially standardized categories with which they (youth) relate. For instance they are neither children nor adults yet they significantly contribute to both categories and have characteristic attributes of each category. This chapter pays special attention to the complex subcategory of the female youth given their explicit exclusionary multidimensional identities. In examining gender -and age-related nuances, the chapter also brings out aspects relating to social justice and equality. The chapter in these aspects examines how youthhood plays out in access to and use of humanitarian assistance and other important post-conflict reconstruction resources including land. I specifically explicate the cultural relevance of the concept of youth as gendered, choice, an economic concept as well as an educational and Western concept drawing on the lived realities of the formerly displaced young people in north eastern Uganda .

Like the chapter opening quote explains, the social understanding of the category of youth is simultaneously characterized by both vulnerabilities and potential. Youth are, for instance, actively involved in adult activities (locally associated with informed decision-making) although they cannot make independent decisions largely due to limited experience. The youth are thus expected to work under adult supervision, guidance, and mentoring. Unguided youth decisions account for the generational disagreements since they in most cases contradict elders’ expectations. As I explore these dynamics, it is also crucial to assess how the youth maneuver and navigate through these social controls and related vulnerable situations. This chapter thus examines youth agency and capabilities amidst challenging socially policed survival situations.

I argue that single categorical constructions and analysis is limiting in understanding the experiences of youth who simultaneously occupy multiple categories. Teenage/child/young mothers, for instance, cannot fully pass as adults if they are not married. They can neither fit in the children’s category because they have children. From a gendered perspective, the social understanding of youth is locally constructed to refer to young men. Female youth in such cases belong everywhere yet they in actual sense belong nowhere hence missing out on assistance and relief services, which target concretized specified categories. Local communities find concepts like “child mothers” as belittling and constraining female youth full identity as “real” mothers. The local community explains that one cannot be both a mother and a child as the child mother notion seems to suggest.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.