Gina Crivello

‘Becoming somebody’: youth transitions through education and migration in Peru

The past few decades have witnessed international pressure to get more children in the world educated, for longer. The view that school education is core to definitions of good childhoods and successful youth transitions is increasingly widespread, globally and locally. However, structural inequalities persist and migration for education has become an important individual, family and community response to overcome these gaps. This article explores the relationship between migration and educational aspirations among a group of young people participating in Young Lives, an international study of child poverty, in Peru. It draws on survey and qualitative data collected on a cohort of children being tracked by the study over a 15-year period, from the time they were 8 years old (2002) into early adulthood (2017). Young people and their parents connect migration with the process of ‘becoming somebody in life’ and with their high educational aspirations. This is linked to intergenerational dependencies and the roles that children play in mitigating family poverty. Their aspirations are generated against a country backdrop of economic and social inequalities, a recent history of political violence and resulting mass displacement, and established and diverse patterns of internal and international migration.

Political Economy, Perception, and Social Change as Mediators of Childhood Risk in Andhra Pradesh

Poverty is one of the most significant adversities confronted by children around the world today. Young Lives aims to improve understanding of the dynamics, causes and consequences of childhood poverty and provide evidence to support the development of effective policies for reducing it and breaking enduring poverty cycles. The study of risk and protection in the context of poverty is central to this endeavour and the focus of this chapter.

What is the value of qualitative longitudinal research with children and young people for international development

This paper draws on data from Young Lives, a longitudinal study of childhood poverty, to explore how international development research might be strengthened by including qualitative longitudinal research (QLR). We review three problems in development studies: (a) the relatively low status of qualitative research within the hierarchy of development knowledge, (b) the predominance of cross-sectional research, and, (c) marginality of research with children and young people. We offer examples from Young Lives research on early marriage in Ethiopia, household poverty dynamics in India and Ethiopia, and aspirations and migration in Peru, to highlight the potential of QLR to address these drawbacks. We suggest that QLR illuminates the dynamic complexities of the processes and practices of everyday life, how they are experienced by children and young people, the responses they make, and the shifting trajectories of their lives.

‘Ridiculed for Not Having Anything’: Children’s Views on Poverty and Inequality in Rural India

This chapter reports on research carried out with boys and girls, aged 12 to 15, participating in Young Lives in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It focuses on young people’s descriptions, explanations, and experiences of poverty and inequality in two contrasting rural communities and highlights implications for research, policy and practice, and rights. Young people growing up in poor communities are generally alert to inequalities and injustices, and to their own disadvantaged situations (see for example, Chapter 11 by Gillian Mann; Bissell 2009; Camfield 2010; or Witter 2002). The research presented here indicates that children perceive material inequalities as indicative of wider differences in power and position, of which they are very much a part. Children’s concerns, explanations, and experiences of the effects of poverty may differ from those of adults, and children often have distinct roles and responsibilities within their families for managing hardship and risk related to household poverty (for example, caring for siblings, carrying out essential household chores, working for pay, and going to school). There may also be important differences in patterns of children’s awareness and under-standing of inequality, reflecting their varied positioning in the social hierarchy and the range of social expectations they manage (related, for example, to age, gender, class, and ethnicity, or caste).

Gender, Agency, and Poverty: Children’s Everyday Experiences in Andhra Pradesh and Vietnam

‘Children’s agency’ and ‘children as social actors’ have become taken for granted in much social science research (James 2009). In studies on childhood, agency has been accepted as a universal feature of what it means to be a child, and in international development, ‘children’s participation’ is an increasingly accepted principle (Vandenbroeck and Bouverne-De Bie 2006). In development, the notion of ‘empowerment’ suggests that power is something that can be bestowed on individuals or groups. This chapter will argue that power and agency are multidimensional and deeply social, including the power and agency of children (Attree 2006; Redmond 2009; Jeffrey 2012). Grounding analysis in children’s narratives of everyday life, the chapter asks what ‘agency’ means for children who grow up in poverty, and whether there are different kinds of agency, particularly for short-term and long-term ends.