Paper short abstract:

The paper unsettles a number of taken-for-granted categories that are widely used in research relating to children and youth in the global South/development discourses, including age, family, adolescences, transitions to adulthood, education/learning, and children's agency/voice.

Paper long abstract:

In this presentation, I reflect on experiences of working on Young Lives, an interdisciplinary international study following children over 15 years, in Ethiopia, Andhra Pradesh & Telengana, India, Peru and Vietnam,(www.younglives.org.uk), to explore what I have termed 'smoke and mirrors'[1] in childhood and youth research. Through this metaphor, I will explore some taken-for-granted yet categories that are used globally, generated by institutions in the Global North, in research, policy and practice: (a) notions of age (birth date, numerical age); (b) family (structure); (c) adolescence/transitions to adulthood; (d) education, work and learning/child development (e) children's agency/ 'voice'. The assumptions underpinning these are the 'smoke' in the title; the 'mirrors' are the ways in which universal assumptions underpinning these concepts are reflected and refracted back to the Global North. The presentation concludes by attempting to explore possibilities for moving beyond binary divisions, by looking for possibilities for the South to be generative and to transfer ideas and values to the North. This involves (a) recognition of the limits of global North theorizations and valuing of local understandings and categories, and (b) exploring lines of enquiry that transgress geographical boundaries - relating to poverty, inequality, migration, displacement, globalization, and sustainable development (relating to the SDGs and beyond).

[1] According to Wikipedia: 'Smoke and mirrors is a metaphor for a deceptive, fraudulent or insubstantial explanation or description'.