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‘I Have to Help and Improve Their Life': Young People's 'transitions' in Ethiopia and Andhra Pradesh, India
This paper explores the lives of young people growing up in Andhra Pradesh, India, and Ethiopia, drawing on data from Young Lives, a longitudinal study of children growing up in four developing countries (www.younglives.org.uk). The paper emphasises the ways in which boundaries between childhood, youth and adulthood are blurred, by exploring young people’s past and present experiences of school and work, and their anticipated futures. The paper uses descriptive statistics to show trends in leaving school, and then draws on qualitative longitudinal research from a series of case studies to explore children’s experiences of leaving school and why. The paper argues that many of the assumptions underpinning international policy discourse that conceptualise early school leaving as ‘dropping out’) fail to engage with the realities of young people’s lives in rural areas that experience numerous economic and environmental ‘shocks’. Gender, poverty, and other social differences combine with a strong sense of obligation to parents and wider family to constrain young people’s choices and trajectories. The paper questions the utility of the concept of ‘transition’ and suggest that it must be used critically and not simply imposed on contexts that are in a process of rapid social change and economic development, but that are generating powerful inequalities that mean that some groups of young people are ‘left behind’.