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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Youth, marginality and development in Guinea Bissau. A case study from the Archipelago of the BijagÓs.
| Panel |
54. Guinea-Bissau: there must be a solution - djitu ten ke ten
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| Paper ID | 309 |
| Author(s) |
Bordonaro, Lorenzo Ibrahim
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| Paper |
View paper (PDF)
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| Abstract | The issue of the integration of young people in the socio-economic and political order of post-independence Guinea Bissau is probably one of the major challenges in the country today, even though not always acknowledged. Young people, while forming a numerical majority, largely feel excluded from power, are socio-economically marginalized and thwarted in their ambitions. They have little access to representative positions or political power. Particularly exposed to the allures of modernity (even though not totally passive to them), young people are particularly aware of the incongruence between state modernism and global modernity: even educated youths are confronted with lack of opportunities, blocked social mobility, and despair about the future. Drawing on a 5 years long research on youth in Bubaque, Archipelago of the Bijagós, my paper will focus upon three main issues. First, I will briefly pinpoint the link between the notions of ‘civilisation’, ‘modernity’ and ‘development’, highlighting the continuities between colonial and post-independence national and international policies in Guinea Bissau. Secondly, I will highlight how the discourse of ‘development’ and the institutions of modernity are appropriated by young people, and how they articulate with local social dynamics, bolstering and giving new shape to intergenerational conflicts. Finally – despite acknowledging the resilience of agency of young people – I will point up that the very discourse of development young people display triggers self-perceptions of marginality and peripheriality, as they realize day after day that the new world order creates marginality as much as connections, often merely deepening and reorganization existing patterns of uneven geographical development established in the colonial era. |
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