Lecture: The social moratorium of youth (on Guinea-Bissau)

By prof. Henrik Vigh (Denmark): this paper builds on 15 years of fieldwork with the Aguentas, a militia of urban youth from the city of Bissau, the capital of Guinea-Bissau. Contrary to common conceptions of youth, this generational position is not seen as a sought after and positive space of amusement and self-realisation in Bissau. Instead of being a space people seek to be included into it is a position to escape from, experienced as a belittling position of subjugation and servitude. The paper, shows how youth is experienced as a state of social truncation and focuses of the sometimes desperate – and often ill-fated – attempts of young men to move on in life.

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