Paper short abstract:

Insights into the dilemmas and wicked problems facing young people in two sites in South Africa and Ethiopia and the limits of state intervention.

Paper long abstract:

Ethiopia and South Africa's youth experience high unemployment, and lack affordable housing. Ethiopia, recently invested in Africa's largest industrial complex in Hawassa, creating new employment for youth. In South Africa, wavering historic investment in Bronkhorstspruit, a former industrial decentralisation site, means high youth unemployment. Successful provision of state housing means some youth are housed, but cannot afford living costs. Youth faced with this wicked conundrum, respond creatively, managing these near-impossible conditions, with differing outcomes. Focusing on these two cases , this study examined the youth work/housing nexus in both cities, examining the everyday experiences of youth in both cities. Utilising an innovative research methodology that aimed at the co-production of data, the teams in both contexts revealed the difficulties and challenges that young people face, their sense of powerlessness to change existing structures and to the deep sense of belonging and entrenchment that they feel within their contexts. Respondents also describe how either due to a lack of housing options or a lack of financial options they are often stuck in their parental homes, sharing with family members and in some ways "trapped" in an unending status of being youths. The elusive pursuit and achievement of autonomy is linked to the co-dependent and mutually contingent situation of being financially and socially dependent. The study offers a deeply descriptive account of these youths' life-worlds, their hopes and aspirations and the effect and impact that state policies have on the micro-lives and every day existence of the youth in these urban contexts.