Roy Huijsmans | Institute of Social Studies, The Hague (original) (raw)

Papers by Roy Huijsmans

Music and Arts in Action, 2022

This article explores the issue of meaning in the form of social commentary in the emerging Lao c... more This article explores the issue of meaning in the form of social commentary in the emerging Lao contemporary arts scene. I do so by focusing on the case of contemporary dance, looking at the performance kip by Noutnapha Soydala. In the context of late socialist Southeast Asia, social commentary remains a delicate matter. Yet, Lao contemporary dancers insist on the importance of imbuing their work with meaning while also stressing meaning as multiple and perpetually becoming. Dialoguing between some of the references in kip and research on Laos I suggest that meaning is best described in terms of potencies: the references trigger recognition and engagement as much as they unsettle any pre-given meaning these may carry. This approach to meaning, I argue, is important for the further development of contemporary arts in Laos whilst occasionally it can also give rise to more closed readings of meaning.

Music and Arts in Action, 2022

In this introduction article, we present the origins of this Special Issue publication and set ou... more In this introduction article, we present the origins of this Special Issue publication and set out the analytical themes underpinning it. The articles in this collection all focus on music and dance in and from the Global South. The central analytical theme connecting the contributions is that of boundaries and the role of dance and music in transgressing and reworking sets of boundaries. This refers to the boundaries of methodological conventions, the boundaries that are often drawn between what are deemed private and public spheres, the role of gender in relation to boundaries as well the spatial dimension of transgressing and reworking boundaries - including the emplaced aspects of dance and music.

textabstractThe figures of the teacher, nurse, soldier and police officer feature prominently in ... more textabstractThe figures of the teacher, nurse, soldier and police officer feature prominently in textbooks and in the aspirations articulated by children in remote rural settings. These occupations represent the category of educated, salaried and uniformed employment, the promised reward for education which is particularly powerful in remote rural areas. The occupations are, however, represented as static endpoints and children do not learn what they entail or how to access them. Realistic rural occupations are largely absent from textbooks or may be represented in an alienating fashion. Efforts to broaden occupational horizons through representations need enforcement by teachers in order to be recognised as actual options by students in remote rural areas.

Ethnography and Education, 2022

In this editorial introduction to the Special Theme, Sacrifice, Suffering and Hope: Education, As... more In this editorial introduction to the Special Theme, Sacrifice, Suffering and Hope: Education, Aspiration and Young People’s Affective Orientations to the Future, we discuss the key theoretical themes (aspiration, sacrifice and affect) that underpin the papers in this collection. With geographical focus on India, Indonesia, Kenya and Bangladesh, our aim is to contribute a more ethnographically-grounded understanding of the affective orientations that emerge or become visible in the context of young people’s educational experiences, and that shape and give meaning to processes of aspiration formation

textabstractLesotho’s new ‘Integrated Curriculum’, introduced in 2009, aims to radically overhaul... more textabstractLesotho’s new ‘Integrated Curriculum’, introduced in 2009, aims to radically overhaul both content and pedagogy for the first 10 years of school. This provides a useful case study as the reforms seek to address some of the challenges that we have identified through our research in rural Laos and India, as well as Lesotho. Broadly, the new curriculum seeks to replace the narrative that education leads to a specified (formal sector, urban) future with one in which children are agents in their own futures – equipping them with the knowledge and skills to plan their own lives and livelihoods within their own geographical context. In practice, however, children’s experiences of education have changed less as a result of the new curriculum than might be expected, and they continue to associate schooling with salaried jobs rather than rural businesses. The research points to useful lessons for future curricular reform in India, Laos and elsewhere.

European Journal of Development Research, 2014

Makara: Human behaviour studies in Asias, 2021

In this article, I conduct an analysis of age-based marketing strategies employed by network prov... more In this article, I conduct an analysis of age-based marketing strategies employed by network providers and present insights obtained from mobile phone history interviews with young people in provincial Vietnam. From these data I argue that young people are a perpetual demographic market frontier in the commercialized mobile media landscape of Southeast Asia. I indicate how network providers contribute to shaping contemporary childhood and youth with their age-based marketing strategies. However, young people’s navigation of the commercial terrain of competing network providers is not determined by commercial forces solely but is also informed by various non-economic factors. This article finds that an appreciation of young people as consumers in the mobile phone era requires appreciating the powerful influence of network providers as well as the multiple relationships in which their economic decision-making is embedded.

Gender, Place and Culture

In this article we develop the theoretical premise that platform companies are in the business of... more In this article we develop the theoretical premise that platform companies are in the business of making markets from a gender perspective. We do so in relation to Kathmandu’s ride-sharing platforms which have emerged in a context of changing gender regimes. Concerns about women’s safety in public transport and recognition of women as a sizeable market-share has led one platform to build gender into its digital interface. For the other platform, gender is indirectly written into its digital design. The neat representation of gender as a bounded category at the level of the platforms’ digital interface obfuscates gender as a situated practice on and off the back of the motorbike. Analysing the placed performance of the platforms illuminates ways of doing gender necessary for (re)producing ride-sharing as a flexible and gendered good in a way that does not negatively affect women’s honour in Nepal’s conservative gender regime. We also flag potential gender based violence if actors’ main interests are different from or go beyond realising ridesharing as a gendered product.

Drawing on 18 months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, this paper brings into dialogue empir... more Drawing on 18 months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, this paper brings into dialogue empirical material from young, highly educated Portuguese migrants in London, theoretical work on desire in migration studies and sociological approaches to theorising aspirations. The paper argues that young migrants' narratives of migration shed important light on the working of aspirations in the processes of becoming through migration. Such orientations towards the future are shaped by young migrants' engagements with doxic and habituated logics producing aspirations. The analytical lens of desire illuminates the role of discursive self-positioning, emotions, and the embodiment of lived experiences of migration in the enacting of particular migrant subjectivities and associated aspirations. In a context in which competing discourses of generation constitute important registers of meaning about migration and aspirations, mobilising generation discourses is a key temporal practice in young migrants' constructions of narratives of migration.

Drawing on ethnographic research in northern Laos, this article analyses articulations of a good ... more Drawing on ethnographic research in northern Laos, this article analyses articulations of a good life in primary school textbook imagery and how this resonates with everyday life in rural upland communities. This is contrasted with children’s sketches of a good life found in the classrooms and ethnographic accounts of moments of ‘good time’ in the context of rural schooling. It is argued that these latter moments constitute brief instances of a good life in the present. Given the deeply hierarchical power relations in which rural education is embedded, not all of these good times stay good for very long. This is reflective of the condition of late socialism in rural areas.

Increasing school enrolment has been a focus of investment, even in remote rural areas whose popu... more Increasing school enrolment has been a focus of investment, even in remote rural areas whose populations are surplus to the requirements of the global economy. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in primary schools and their neighbouring communities in rural areas of Lesotho, India and Laos, we explore how young people, their parents and teachers experience schooling in places where the prospects of incorporation into professional employment (or any well rewarded economic activity) are slim. We show how schooling uses aspiration, holding out a promise of a 'better future' remote from the lives of rural children. However, children’s attachment to such promises is tenuous, boosted yet troubled by the small minority who defy the odds and succeed. We question why education systems continue to promote occupational aspirations that are unattainable by most, and why donors and governments invest so heavily in increasing human capital that cannot be absorbed

Drawing on life history interviews conducted in Indian and Indonesian study sites, we tease out t... more Drawing on life history interviews conducted in Indian and Indonesian study sites, we tease out the social production of aspirations in the process of becoming a farmer. We show the power of a doxic logic in which schooling is regarded as the pathway out of farming, towards a future of non-manual, salaried employment. Among rural youth this doxic logic produces broadly defined aspiration such as ‘completing education’, and ‘getting a job’. In the absence of clear pathways to realise such aspirations, young people seek to keep options open. Yet, the scope for doing so changes in relation to key life events such as ending school, migration and marriage and does so in distinctly gendered ways. We conclude proposing that young people’s delayed entrance into farming, among other things, must be understood as an attempt to keep open those futures that are considered closed by an early entry into full-time farming.

European Journal of Development Research

In this editorial introduction to the Special Issue Youth, Aspirations and the Life Course: Devel... more In this editorial introduction to the Special Issue Youth, Aspirations and the Life Course: Development and the social production of aspirations in young people’s lives, we put the work presented in this collection in conversation with the wider literature on development, youth and aspirations. Aspiration we define as an orientation towards a desired future. We elaborate on our conceptualisation of aspirations as socially produced and reflect on the methodological challenges in researching young people’s aspirations in development. While mindful of the various critiques of aspiration research we argue that aspirations constitute fertile terrain for theorising the temporal dynamics of being young and growing up in contexts of development.

In this article, we bring to the foreground an understudied dimension of working children's lives... more In this article, we bring to the foreground an understudied dimension of working children's lives in the Global South: their access to money and the consumption this facilitates. Drawing on life history interviews, we show that among the Gamo weavers of Ethiopia, the modern phenomenon of a monetised childhood is at least six decades old and an element of the informal apprenticeships through which Gamo children learn to weave. Qualitative research with young weavers shows that both girls and boys become involved in weaving. Yet the amount of senbeta misa money they receive differs substantially, fuelling distinctly different consumption practices and reinforcing broader gender relations. Zooming in on boys' monetised leisure activities, we furthermore argue that through consumption belonging to age-based, ethnic peer groups is realised. Moreover, while the monetisation of leisure is shaped by globalisation and market forces, we show that boys and young men themselves also actively contribute to the monetisation of their leisure activities and thereby transform the nature of play.

Money and Moralities in Contemporary Asia, 2019

Banknotes constitute a productive lens for exploring some of the frictions and shifts in moraliti... more Banknotes constitute a productive lens for exploring some of the frictions and shifts in moralities brought about by rapid change characterizing the post-socialist condition in Southeast Asia. This chapter discusses how cash-related moralities emerge from the loose relation between national currencies and national territory, through the moral tales of the banknotes’ iconography, and its contested role in the politico-economic project of post-socialism. Drawing on articles and commentaries published in the English language and government censored newspaper, Vientiane Times, the chapter explores two moral tales surrounding the Lao currency kip. These cases shed light on the importance of morality in the infrastructure of intimacy that money constitutes and its contested, gendered, nature in times of rapid change.

SUPPORTING BRIGHTER FUTURES Young women and girls and labour migration in South-East Asia and the Pacific, 2019

Based on a review of the literature, this chapter analyses the various ways in which migration an... more Based on a review of the literature, this chapter analyses the various ways in which migration and education interact in the lives of girls and young women across Southeast Asia. It differentiates between the impact of parental migration on their daughters education and how girls’ and young women’s own involvement in labour migration affects their education. Depending on a range of factors, the chapter concludes that girls’ and young women’s migration may contribute to lengthening their participation in formal schooling, but may also lead to an early termination of it. The chapter also makes the case for conceptualising education more holistically. This allows recognising that for some girls and young women migration itself may be educational and a realistic pathway towards acquiring new sets of skills.

Chapter in 'Children and Young People's Worlds', 2018

Migration is an emotional experience, and so is the policy and research work associated with it. ... more Migration is an emotional experience, and so is the policy and research work associated with it. Yet, discussions on emotions and affect remain largely absent from the literature on children and youth migration. Writing auto-ethnographically, I revisit my research with/about young Lao migrants with the aim of teasing out how emotions, of young migrants, of my own and in policy making emerged in relation to various dimensions of young people’s migration. On this basis I make the case for appreciating emotions as knowledge. While emotions are ‘moving’ in an affective sense, I proceed by arguing the productive dimension of emotions through the idea of the emotive as ‘knowledge that moves’. I substantiate this point by discussing instances in which emotions as a particular form of knowledge ‘move’ research decisions, policy making processes, theorizing the youthful dimension of migration as well as the interpersonal relations through which ethnographic research is realized.

Drawing on ethnographic research with Lao village youth in a Lao–Thai borderland, I argue that th... more Drawing on ethnographic research with Lao village youth in a Lao–Thai borderland, I argue that their involvement in cross‐border day labour illuminates the interplay between the dynamics of “becoming mobile” and “growing up.” Despite the autonomy Lao village youth displays in cross‐border day labour, the practice is shaped by, situated within, and at the same time reproduces structural relations of inequality constituting the borderland. The social organisation of the networks of cross‐border day labour skew the practice towards youth from ethnic Lao original households. This has repercussions on how youth from the more marginalised settler households become mobile and assert their youthfulness. The “generationed” perspective presented in this article contributes to the situating of young people's agency in borderland mobilities, understanding agency as shaped by, and shaping the intersection of gendered life course dynamics, household histories, and the sociocultural and politico‐economic dynamics constituting the borderland.

The policy phrase Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) is rapidly gaining groun... more The policy phrase Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) is rapidly gaining ground across Southeast Asia (and beyond). Despite numerous policy reports, little is known about how vocational training and education work as sites of practice. This is especially true for informal household-based apprenticeships and privately organized, commercial classroom-based training. Yet, these latter arrangements are numerous, an integral part of the widespread informal economy, and reflecting the fact that homes have retained their productive character in much of the Global South. Combining a village-based perspective (Laos) with an urban-based perspective (Cambodia), we analyse how these informal and privately organized training spaces are situated in rural youth’s gendered lives and shaped by, but also generative of, aspirations of ‘becoming someone’. In addition, comparing informal apprenticeships with classroom-based training leads us to raise some important questions about the implications of the (global) policy emphasis on the standardization and formalization of TVET.

Music and Arts in Action, 2022

This article explores the issue of meaning in the form of social commentary in the emerging Lao c... more This article explores the issue of meaning in the form of social commentary in the emerging Lao contemporary arts scene. I do so by focusing on the case of contemporary dance, looking at the performance kip by Noutnapha Soydala. In the context of late socialist Southeast Asia, social commentary remains a delicate matter. Yet, Lao contemporary dancers insist on the importance of imbuing their work with meaning while also stressing meaning as multiple and perpetually becoming. Dialoguing between some of the references in kip and research on Laos I suggest that meaning is best described in terms of potencies: the references trigger recognition and engagement as much as they unsettle any pre-given meaning these may carry. This approach to meaning, I argue, is important for the further development of contemporary arts in Laos whilst occasionally it can also give rise to more closed readings of meaning.

Music and Arts in Action, 2022

In this introduction article, we present the origins of this Special Issue publication and set ou... more In this introduction article, we present the origins of this Special Issue publication and set out the analytical themes underpinning it. The articles in this collection all focus on music and dance in and from the Global South. The central analytical theme connecting the contributions is that of boundaries and the role of dance and music in transgressing and reworking sets of boundaries. This refers to the boundaries of methodological conventions, the boundaries that are often drawn between what are deemed private and public spheres, the role of gender in relation to boundaries as well the spatial dimension of transgressing and reworking boundaries - including the emplaced aspects of dance and music.

textabstractThe figures of the teacher, nurse, soldier and police officer feature prominently in ... more textabstractThe figures of the teacher, nurse, soldier and police officer feature prominently in textbooks and in the aspirations articulated by children in remote rural settings. These occupations represent the category of educated, salaried and uniformed employment, the promised reward for education which is particularly powerful in remote rural areas. The occupations are, however, represented as static endpoints and children do not learn what they entail or how to access them. Realistic rural occupations are largely absent from textbooks or may be represented in an alienating fashion. Efforts to broaden occupational horizons through representations need enforcement by teachers in order to be recognised as actual options by students in remote rural areas.

Ethnography and Education, 2022

In this editorial introduction to the Special Theme, Sacrifice, Suffering and Hope: Education, As... more In this editorial introduction to the Special Theme, Sacrifice, Suffering and Hope: Education, Aspiration and Young People’s Affective Orientations to the Future, we discuss the key theoretical themes (aspiration, sacrifice and affect) that underpin the papers in this collection. With geographical focus on India, Indonesia, Kenya and Bangladesh, our aim is to contribute a more ethnographically-grounded understanding of the affective orientations that emerge or become visible in the context of young people’s educational experiences, and that shape and give meaning to processes of aspiration formation

textabstractLesotho’s new ‘Integrated Curriculum’, introduced in 2009, aims to radically overhaul... more textabstractLesotho’s new ‘Integrated Curriculum’, introduced in 2009, aims to radically overhaul both content and pedagogy for the first 10 years of school. This provides a useful case study as the reforms seek to address some of the challenges that we have identified through our research in rural Laos and India, as well as Lesotho. Broadly, the new curriculum seeks to replace the narrative that education leads to a specified (formal sector, urban) future with one in which children are agents in their own futures – equipping them with the knowledge and skills to plan their own lives and livelihoods within their own geographical context. In practice, however, children’s experiences of education have changed less as a result of the new curriculum than might be expected, and they continue to associate schooling with salaried jobs rather than rural businesses. The research points to useful lessons for future curricular reform in India, Laos and elsewhere.

European Journal of Development Research, 2014

Makara: Human behaviour studies in Asias, 2021

In this article, I conduct an analysis of age-based marketing strategies employed by network prov... more In this article, I conduct an analysis of age-based marketing strategies employed by network providers and present insights obtained from mobile phone history interviews with young people in provincial Vietnam. From these data I argue that young people are a perpetual demographic market frontier in the commercialized mobile media landscape of Southeast Asia. I indicate how network providers contribute to shaping contemporary childhood and youth with their age-based marketing strategies. However, young people’s navigation of the commercial terrain of competing network providers is not determined by commercial forces solely but is also informed by various non-economic factors. This article finds that an appreciation of young people as consumers in the mobile phone era requires appreciating the powerful influence of network providers as well as the multiple relationships in which their economic decision-making is embedded.

Gender, Place and Culture

In this article we develop the theoretical premise that platform companies are in the business of... more In this article we develop the theoretical premise that platform companies are in the business of making markets from a gender perspective. We do so in relation to Kathmandu’s ride-sharing platforms which have emerged in a context of changing gender regimes. Concerns about women’s safety in public transport and recognition of women as a sizeable market-share has led one platform to build gender into its digital interface. For the other platform, gender is indirectly written into its digital design. The neat representation of gender as a bounded category at the level of the platforms’ digital interface obfuscates gender as a situated practice on and off the back of the motorbike. Analysing the placed performance of the platforms illuminates ways of doing gender necessary for (re)producing ride-sharing as a flexible and gendered good in a way that does not negatively affect women’s honour in Nepal’s conservative gender regime. We also flag potential gender based violence if actors’ main interests are different from or go beyond realising ridesharing as a gendered product.

Drawing on 18 months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, this paper brings into dialogue empir... more Drawing on 18 months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, this paper brings into dialogue empirical material from young, highly educated Portuguese migrants in London, theoretical work on desire in migration studies and sociological approaches to theorising aspirations. The paper argues that young migrants' narratives of migration shed important light on the working of aspirations in the processes of becoming through migration. Such orientations towards the future are shaped by young migrants' engagements with doxic and habituated logics producing aspirations. The analytical lens of desire illuminates the role of discursive self-positioning, emotions, and the embodiment of lived experiences of migration in the enacting of particular migrant subjectivities and associated aspirations. In a context in which competing discourses of generation constitute important registers of meaning about migration and aspirations, mobilising generation discourses is a key temporal practice in young migrants' constructions of narratives of migration.

Drawing on ethnographic research in northern Laos, this article analyses articulations of a good ... more Drawing on ethnographic research in northern Laos, this article analyses articulations of a good life in primary school textbook imagery and how this resonates with everyday life in rural upland communities. This is contrasted with children’s sketches of a good life found in the classrooms and ethnographic accounts of moments of ‘good time’ in the context of rural schooling. It is argued that these latter moments constitute brief instances of a good life in the present. Given the deeply hierarchical power relations in which rural education is embedded, not all of these good times stay good for very long. This is reflective of the condition of late socialism in rural areas.

Increasing school enrolment has been a focus of investment, even in remote rural areas whose popu... more Increasing school enrolment has been a focus of investment, even in remote rural areas whose populations are surplus to the requirements of the global economy. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in primary schools and their neighbouring communities in rural areas of Lesotho, India and Laos, we explore how young people, their parents and teachers experience schooling in places where the prospects of incorporation into professional employment (or any well rewarded economic activity) are slim. We show how schooling uses aspiration, holding out a promise of a 'better future' remote from the lives of rural children. However, children’s attachment to such promises is tenuous, boosted yet troubled by the small minority who defy the odds and succeed. We question why education systems continue to promote occupational aspirations that are unattainable by most, and why donors and governments invest so heavily in increasing human capital that cannot be absorbed

Drawing on life history interviews conducted in Indian and Indonesian study sites, we tease out t... more Drawing on life history interviews conducted in Indian and Indonesian study sites, we tease out the social production of aspirations in the process of becoming a farmer. We show the power of a doxic logic in which schooling is regarded as the pathway out of farming, towards a future of non-manual, salaried employment. Among rural youth this doxic logic produces broadly defined aspiration such as ‘completing education’, and ‘getting a job’. In the absence of clear pathways to realise such aspirations, young people seek to keep options open. Yet, the scope for doing so changes in relation to key life events such as ending school, migration and marriage and does so in distinctly gendered ways. We conclude proposing that young people’s delayed entrance into farming, among other things, must be understood as an attempt to keep open those futures that are considered closed by an early entry into full-time farming.

European Journal of Development Research

In this editorial introduction to the Special Issue Youth, Aspirations and the Life Course: Devel... more In this editorial introduction to the Special Issue Youth, Aspirations and the Life Course: Development and the social production of aspirations in young people’s lives, we put the work presented in this collection in conversation with the wider literature on development, youth and aspirations. Aspiration we define as an orientation towards a desired future. We elaborate on our conceptualisation of aspirations as socially produced and reflect on the methodological challenges in researching young people’s aspirations in development. While mindful of the various critiques of aspiration research we argue that aspirations constitute fertile terrain for theorising the temporal dynamics of being young and growing up in contexts of development.

In this article, we bring to the foreground an understudied dimension of working children's lives... more In this article, we bring to the foreground an understudied dimension of working children's lives in the Global South: their access to money and the consumption this facilitates. Drawing on life history interviews, we show that among the Gamo weavers of Ethiopia, the modern phenomenon of a monetised childhood is at least six decades old and an element of the informal apprenticeships through which Gamo children learn to weave. Qualitative research with young weavers shows that both girls and boys become involved in weaving. Yet the amount of senbeta misa money they receive differs substantially, fuelling distinctly different consumption practices and reinforcing broader gender relations. Zooming in on boys' monetised leisure activities, we furthermore argue that through consumption belonging to age-based, ethnic peer groups is realised. Moreover, while the monetisation of leisure is shaped by globalisation and market forces, we show that boys and young men themselves also actively contribute to the monetisation of their leisure activities and thereby transform the nature of play.

Money and Moralities in Contemporary Asia, 2019

Banknotes constitute a productive lens for exploring some of the frictions and shifts in moraliti... more Banknotes constitute a productive lens for exploring some of the frictions and shifts in moralities brought about by rapid change characterizing the post-socialist condition in Southeast Asia. This chapter discusses how cash-related moralities emerge from the loose relation between national currencies and national territory, through the moral tales of the banknotes’ iconography, and its contested role in the politico-economic project of post-socialism. Drawing on articles and commentaries published in the English language and government censored newspaper, Vientiane Times, the chapter explores two moral tales surrounding the Lao currency kip. These cases shed light on the importance of morality in the infrastructure of intimacy that money constitutes and its contested, gendered, nature in times of rapid change.

SUPPORTING BRIGHTER FUTURES Young women and girls and labour migration in South-East Asia and the Pacific, 2019

Based on a review of the literature, this chapter analyses the various ways in which migration an... more Based on a review of the literature, this chapter analyses the various ways in which migration and education interact in the lives of girls and young women across Southeast Asia. It differentiates between the impact of parental migration on their daughters education and how girls’ and young women’s own involvement in labour migration affects their education. Depending on a range of factors, the chapter concludes that girls’ and young women’s migration may contribute to lengthening their participation in formal schooling, but may also lead to an early termination of it. The chapter also makes the case for conceptualising education more holistically. This allows recognising that for some girls and young women migration itself may be educational and a realistic pathway towards acquiring new sets of skills.

Chapter in 'Children and Young People's Worlds', 2018

Migration is an emotional experience, and so is the policy and research work associated with it. ... more Migration is an emotional experience, and so is the policy and research work associated with it. Yet, discussions on emotions and affect remain largely absent from the literature on children and youth migration. Writing auto-ethnographically, I revisit my research with/about young Lao migrants with the aim of teasing out how emotions, of young migrants, of my own and in policy making emerged in relation to various dimensions of young people’s migration. On this basis I make the case for appreciating emotions as knowledge. While emotions are ‘moving’ in an affective sense, I proceed by arguing the productive dimension of emotions through the idea of the emotive as ‘knowledge that moves’. I substantiate this point by discussing instances in which emotions as a particular form of knowledge ‘move’ research decisions, policy making processes, theorizing the youthful dimension of migration as well as the interpersonal relations through which ethnographic research is realized.

Drawing on ethnographic research with Lao village youth in a Lao–Thai borderland, I argue that th... more Drawing on ethnographic research with Lao village youth in a Lao–Thai borderland, I argue that their involvement in cross‐border day labour illuminates the interplay between the dynamics of “becoming mobile” and “growing up.” Despite the autonomy Lao village youth displays in cross‐border day labour, the practice is shaped by, situated within, and at the same time reproduces structural relations of inequality constituting the borderland. The social organisation of the networks of cross‐border day labour skew the practice towards youth from ethnic Lao original households. This has repercussions on how youth from the more marginalised settler households become mobile and assert their youthfulness. The “generationed” perspective presented in this article contributes to the situating of young people's agency in borderland mobilities, understanding agency as shaped by, and shaping the intersection of gendered life course dynamics, household histories, and the sociocultural and politico‐economic dynamics constituting the borderland.

The policy phrase Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) is rapidly gaining groun... more The policy phrase Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) is rapidly gaining ground across Southeast Asia (and beyond). Despite numerous policy reports, little is known about how vocational training and education work as sites of practice. This is especially true for informal household-based apprenticeships and privately organized, commercial classroom-based training. Yet, these latter arrangements are numerous, an integral part of the widespread informal economy, and reflecting the fact that homes have retained their productive character in much of the Global South. Combining a village-based perspective (Laos) with an urban-based perspective (Cambodia), we analyse how these informal and privately organized training spaces are situated in rural youth’s gendered lives and shaped by, but also generative of, aspirations of ‘becoming someone’. In addition, comparing informal apprenticeships with classroom-based training leads us to raise some important questions about the implications of the (global) policy emphasis on the standardization and formalization of TVET.

Generationing Development, 2016

Employing a generational approach, this chapter decentres adults’ voices in research on condition... more Employing a generational approach, this chapter decentres adults’ voices in research on conditional cash transfer programmes creating the conceptual space for bringing in children’s experiences and perspectives. The Ecuadorian programme Bono de Desarrollo Humano (BDH) targets households with children, providing income support and incentivising human capital investments aiming at breaking the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Chronological age constitutes a key measure in the architecture of the BDH which renders childhood a site of investment and adulthood a time for productive employment. Being a BDH recipient affects children’s relational position in the household, vis-à-vis other children, and the state. Teenage motherhood is analysed as friction between the age-normativity shaping the BDH design and the lived realities of poor families.