Growing-up in the Global South: Theorizing Education-Employment Nexus, Youth Scholarship, and Methodologies in the Philippines

This paper theorizes a specific significant dimension of growing-up process in contemporary world, the “education-employment nexus” in the context of the life histories of disadvantaged cohort of Filipinos born in the 1970s locally known in the country as “istambays”.  It challenges the prevailing view of seeing istambays as merely unemployed-disconnected individuals by demonstrating how this phenomenon is shaped and negotiated during their growing-up years, specifically observable during schooling and first years of employment. Using household and life history data from four research sites, carefully designed and modified to best capture local contexts, istambay thesis offers alternative-localized views on the relations between youthhood and structured forms of marginalizations, and how this understanding may have significant implications on introducing new dimensions in the current education and labor policies and practices in the Philippines. In essence, the paper demonstrates how istambay phenomenon contributes to theorizing Global South phenomenon using youth scholarship and methodologies that are localized, creative, and sociologically-sound.