Youth and the future of work: introduction

Abstract

This editorial introduces and frames the six papers of this special section. It begins by proposing that youth unemployment needs to be understood in relation to a range of patterns of "getting by" in the global south. We suggest that the many practices of work, including informal ones, discussed in the collection do not attest to a society in "need of development" but rather point towards the future of work, here and elsewhere. While taking transformations in capitalism seriously, we argue that renewed pressures on secure wage work may not lead to a precarity in quite the same way that it has been theorised in the global north. Instead, especially through a focus on youth and generation, we point to multiple experiential circumstances in which work and its futures are enacted. These pertain to time and value and to the importance of space in positioning actors in enabling or foreclosing opportunities for earning income.