Crisis and Climate Transitions: Youth Livelihoods and Wellbeing in Colombia, Ghana, India, and Malawi

• In Event: The Future is Now: Youth Engagement and Environmental Action

Proposal

This paper draws from two team ethnographic studies to explore youth livelihoods and wellbeing in economically and geographically marginalized rural communities in Colombia, Ghana, India, and Malawi that are experiencing extreme impacts due to climate change and environmental degradation. Extended ethnographic research was conducted with in- and out-of-school youth in each country by the paper co-authors; in most cases, the research was conducted within a comparative ethnographic team study focused on youth's public secondary school experiences in marginalized communities.

The paper explores similarities and differences among youth's narrations and experiences of socio-cultural and political economic transitions, and links these to: 1) the end (Li, 2014) of a wide variety of natural resources on which youth and adults in each ecology have historically depended for survival, thriving, and developing livelihood approaches that assure a level of stability; 2) very different structures and experiences of socio-economic inequities in each community; 3) sense-making related to worldviews and religions--and particularly the extent to which people imagined that the current moment represents a transition into Biblical end times; and 4) youth's explanations of why they were in school or out of school, and if and how they expected that schooling would influence their futures. Across these themes, we explore how each setting and the changes occurring in it shape youth livelihoods and wellbeing, and the consequential gender, geographic, economic, social, and health inequities that youth experienced within and across community sites.

The presentation will also reflect on shared methods used in both studies, particularly the half-day youth walk-around interviews (in which the researchers walked with interviewees to and through key daily activities for 1-8 hours), which provided much richer data on the physical contexts and ecologies through which youth moved and on which they depended; and on youth transitions--through different spaces, institutions, relationships, and contexts.

Lastly, the paper reflects on the particular calls being made by adults in spaces that youth frequented (schools, informal work spaces, churches, etc.) concerning the "good life" towards which youth should aspire, and the (often quite different) ways that youth themselves talked about their hopes, dreams, and daily realities. We reflect on what youth's responses to these "adult" narratives can tell us about changing generational norms concerning wellbeing in the anthropocene, and how youth's own experiences can help us rethink climate change education, education for sustainability, and the learning outcomes to which schools might aspire for improving youth lives under conditions of extreme climate change.

Authors

• Nancy Kendall, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Yaa Oparebea Ampofo, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Miriam Thangaraj

• Yenny Chavarria, The University of Wisconsin-Madison