this report

2013/09/16
Outline
RURAL YOUTH
Belonging and Youth Citizenship in Contexts
of Adversity
Youth Development modalities and sustainable livelihoods:
Policy and implementation perspectives on the NARYSEC Programme
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Two views about NARYSEC
The effects of adversity
Similarities and differences
Citizenship and markers of belonging
Current youth studies approaches
Navigational capacities – a new idea
Prof. Sharlene Swartz
11 September 2013
Above the line and below the line
TWO VIEWS ABOUT NARYSEC
Above the line and below the line
Goals and elements of NARYSEC
GOALS
⏏Youth employment ⏏ Literacy and skills ⏏ Disposable
income
ELEMENTS
1. Character/life skills training (discipline, patriotism,
rights)
2. FET (construction, agriculture, environment, welding,
electrical, data capturing, records management)
3. Skills development (mentorship, budgeting, management)
4. Community service
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Do these goals and elements
address citizenship and
belonging for rural youth?
National Youth Policy 2009 – 2014
1. Youth development: “maximise their
individual and collective creative energies
for personal development… development of
the broader society”.
2. Access to services
3. Retaining them in service of their
communities.
THE EFFECTS OF ADVERSITY
Blue eyes -Brown eyes
1. Jane Elliot – an exercise in discrimination (1971,
Riceville, Iowa)
2. A class of grade 3s – 8 years old
3. Told blue eyed children were better, faster, cleverer,
nicer – first day, allowed seconds at lunch, could use
school equipment etc.
4. Given a task to do – performed it in 2.5 minutes
5. Next day they were told they were naughty,
disobedient, stupid, not good enough, not allowed to
play on swings, stayed inside
6. Took 5 minutes to perform the same test
7. Reversed activity next day, same result
8. An example of symbolic violence
Why these two stories?
1. We need a deep understanding of the effect of
discrimination and prejudice – that sociologists call
structural and symbolic violence
2. We need a double perspective on youth rural
development
• On the one hand – jobs, skills and income
• On the other citizenship and belonging, and the
tools to help them, and for them to help each other
out of the pit of the past
3. We need to ask what’s the minimum we want and
what’s the most we want – simultaneously?
• We need to believe that the next Einstein will come
out of Africa, possible even rural Africa, with
unfettered creativity (Neil Turok)
Structural and symbolic violence
1. Structural violence: the institutionalisation of social
processes that cause suffering through organising
unequal access to social resources based on markers of
difference.
2. A “progenetic worm… ensuring that the effects of
inequality remain and gives birth to new social
problems”
3. Symbolic violence is the process of internalising identitybased oppressions associated and helps explain how
current legacies of poverty and injustice are accepted
by people as the only reality
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Young black South
Africans living in ikasi
1. Different kinds of
young people
2. Understandings of
structural violence
(incl. poverty,
Apartheid and
responsibility
3. Aspirations and
meritocracy
4. Markers of belonging
and citizenship
Youth voices
Nonkiza: Apartheid hasn’t affected my life. I live in a
freedom world now. I will have a house like
yours if I work hard.
Luxolo: When I was born there was no Apartheid.
Vuma:
I blame no one because I am myself. No one
pushes me to do anything - if I say no I say
no. So like I blame no one. Not my friends
…cos they didn’t force me to smoke [dagga]
you know … [but] if I were not living there like maybe I was …being an other person –
maybe I was not behaving like I am now.
Social science that makes a difference
Responsibility/Meritocracy
100
90
I am responsible
80
70
60
50
Something or
someone else is
responsible
40
30
20
10
0
Young men
Young women
Both
Social science that makes a difference
Vignettes from a rural university
1. The choice between “studying my books and herding
cattle” (Siyabonga, 23, UFH, male)
2. No understanding of how racism affects their lives
3. Perceived improved gender equality in the workplace but
not in the homestead
4. Strong senses of meritocracy
5. “The teachers were kind to me” – many still in touch with
these teachers
6. There were three kinds of youth at school “Serious,
Careless, Untouchables” (Pumla, 44, UFH, female)
“Among the majority of young people, pervasive critical
consciousness was absent….there appeared to be little
understanding about how these current problems had structural
causes and origins in historical injustices. … Most tacitly refused
to identify themselves as victims of injustice… Their refusal
appeared to be connected to their desire not to jeopardise their
future; they seemed keen to forget and move on, little realising
how remembering might in fact aid their liberation. …
Consequently, these youth did not wallow in their victimhood.
They were active;… [and] employed the … South African
discourse of possibility. They were agents engaged in selfdefinition…On the one hand …hurt… while on the other they
attempt to heal themselves through hope and dreams (‘I want
something better’). They are not in that sense ‘wounded’ citizens
but active participants (albeit with injured attachments) in the
citizenship project of becoming someone”
(Swartz, et al, 2012, p. 37).
Four types of youth in ikasi
14%
8%
35%
43%
Mommy's
Babies
Right Ones
Kasi kids
Skollies
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SIMILARITIES AND
DIFFERENCES
The North South GeoLocation Youth Divide
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
Education: Enrolment similar, attendance, completion, quality different
Literacy: Comparable, lower for young women in South
HIV: Not North-South, but sub-Saharan Africa v. rest
Life expectancy: Lowest in South
Tobacco use: Uniformly high among 13-15 year olds
Suicide: Higher in Global north countries
Crime and violence: Comparable between North and South e.g. US and Russia,
UK and India
Employment: Not a strict NS divide, highest in Africa, lowest in Asia
Demographics: Global South 2x as many 10-19 in pop., more female
adolescents married
Poverty: Global North all above 0.8 on HDI; food secure
Equality: Global North countries more equal
Civic participation: No data, but North youth more access to technology
Sociocultural lives: Happiness and life satisfaction lower in South (except for
Columbia and Brazil)
RURAL YOUTH
UNKNOWN
• Levels of disability
• Political transitions
• Unemployment rates
• Sexual and
reproductive health
• Health
• Social solidarity
• Life expectancy
• School throughput
• Success at
university/FET
• Child headed
URBAN YOUTH
households
• Victims of violence
• Poverty
• Perpetrators of crime
• Educational quality
• Social unrest/protest
• Food security
• Voting participation
• Migration
• School to work
transitions
• Home to independent
living
In South Africa?
1. Poverty: Black youth 2x coloured, 4x Indian, 8x white
2. Education: Black youth complete 2 years later than WY;
12 yrs of schooling - 35% black youth, 80% WY.
3. Tertiary: White/Indian youth 4x enrolment of black/col.
4. Unemployment: Black youth (15-24) 4x white/Indian
rate; Black youth (25 to 34) 8x WY
6. Pregnancy: 8x higher among black youth than WY (18-24)
7. HIV: 10x higher amongst black Africans
8. Violence and crime: White youth 6x more likely to be
hijacked as black youth; sexual assault and assault similar
9. Death: Black youth 4x more likely to die (14-34)
10.Future optimism: Black youth twice as optimistic as WY
Magnified adversities
Youth experiences are similar but the
magnitude and impact varies greatly
between the two. In addition, for young
people living in the rural communities,
belonging is also dissimilarly influenced by
traditional culture and values,
inequalities, diversity, and the influence
of technology, family and environment.
CITIZENSHIP AND MARKERS OF
BELONGING
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Inclusion/Exclusion
Two conceptualisations of citizenship in modernity (Berlant,
2000; van Gunteren 1994; Wilson 1994):
1. INCLUSION: A bundle of constitutional rights and
responsibilities defined and guaranteed by membership
in the state and submission to its power. Including public
participation, in community life and decision-making,
Land and property, Rights, Capital, Economic
participation, Privilege
2. EXCLUSION: Oppression, Inequality, Marginalisation. The
constant struggle of marginalised persons to expose the
violence inherent in their exclusion and the social origin
of the state.
Markers of exclusion
1. To be unable to participate directly in the functions of
the collective, or to be dependent on others for social
access or even subsistence, is to be excluded from
full participation as a citizen (Swartz, 2010).
2. Beyond material effects are the emotional
consequences of poverty and unemployment,
including a loss of dignity and autonomy, of purpose
and coherent structure to life, of a sense of safety and
the onset of feelings of hopelessness.
3. Results in a lack of understanding of rights, and the
absence of a sense of belonging to their country.
Luxolo on belonging
Luxolo:
Sharlene:
Luxolo:
Sharlene:
Luxolo:
I would say like you know when you want
something – there are the kids, you know…
maybe they’re wearing R500 shoes and you want
to have them but you can’t have them, that sort of
like puts you down, yah. But then you can’t have
them. Like, you just wish you were like that kid,
yah.
And how does that make you feel?
Sort of like you, you, maybe like you’re not,
you’re not someone like out there – in South
Africa.
And why is it important to be someone out there?
To be like recognised as a person.
Two theoretical approaches
Socio-Cultural approach
Dynamic Systems approach
1. Contexts
1. Assets
2. Sociology
2. Psychology
3. Youth opposition, resistance,
identity, capitals, power
3. Risks, protection,
delinquency
4. Analysis of institutions that
4. Engagement between
perpetuate racial oppression,
person/environment,
gender inequality, social
relationships and belonging,
divisions, spatial segregation,
values, skills, competence,
cultural hegemony
confidence, character,
connection, and caring
CURRENT YOUTH STUDIES
APPROACHES
What are the weaknesses for
Rural Youth in both approaches?
1. A focus on individual rather than collective agency
2. Over abundance of analysis and too little empirical
data at all
3. Untested assets in adverse contexts
4. No theorised rural contexts
5. No rural theorists
What might help?
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What might help Rural Youth?
1. Assets and Analysis
2. Agency and Intervention
3. New definitions of flourishing or overcoming
adversity
4. A new conceptual metaphor - Navigational
Capacities – to talk about different vehicles for
different youth terrains and contexts
NAVIGATIONAL CAPACITIES
Navigational capacities for youth
development in contexts of
adversity
1. Focusing on the transition from adversity to success
2. From dependence to productivity
3. ‘The analysis, aspirations, motivations, resources,
connections, opportunities and pathways available to
youth (or obtainable) in the pursuit of success”.
4. “It relates to prevalent notions of aspiration, ‘desire
lines’, motivation, and cultural and social capital young
people possess, but also include the effect of individualist
and collectivist cultures on outcomes”.
Navigational Capacities – the capacity to…
I. ASSERT INDIVIDUAL AGENCY
See • Overcome • Budget
II. ACQUIRE CAPITALS IN PRIMARY CONTEXTS
Plan • Articulate • Present
III. RECOGNISE/ANALYSE PROXIMAL INTERCONNECTING
SYSTEMS
Connect • Resist • Reflect
IV. RECOGNISE/ANALYSE DISTAL INSTITUTIONS, PRACTICES
AND POLICIES
Analyse • Confront • Hustle
V. ACHIEVE EMANCIPATORY IDENTITIES
Aspire • Evaluate • Embrace
VI. ORGANISE COLLECTIVE AGENCY AND PARTICIPATE IN
TRANSITIONS
Organise • Freedom • Advocate
Key questions still
requiring answers
1. How are the contexts of Rural Youth empirically different
to that of their Urban counterparts?
2. How do patterns of repeated migration affect these
differences and similarities?
3. What navigational capacities do Rural Youth require,
individually and collectively, in order to move from
adversity to success?
4. What do Rural Youth and the institutions who serve
them say they need?
5. What conceptions and practices of belonging and
citizenship need to be incorporated into youth
development programmes, including NARYSEC?
RURAL YOUTH
Citizenship and belonging
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