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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how urban youth use educational aspirations to negotiate inequalities and imagine secure urban futures. Drawing on qualitative study, it highlights strategies, constraints, and the transformative potential of youth-led efforts to expand tertiary education in the Global South.

Paper long abstract

This paper investigates the ways in young individuals residing in Colombo's low-income and informal urban settlements utilize their educational aspirations as a strategy to shape their future trajectories amidst a backdrop of uncertainty and inequality. Drawing on twenty semi-structured interviews with both youth and parents, the study scrutinizes how aspirations function as a form of mobilization, both personal and collective within environments characterized by precarity, informality, and limited institutional support. Utilizing Bourdieu’s theoretical constructs of habitus, capital, and field, in conjunction with an intersectional perspective, the analysis elucidates how class, gender, ethnicity, and religion intersect to create varied opportunities and constraints. The findings underscore an aspiration–achievement paradox: although young individuals express strong ambitions for tertiary education, these aspirations are continually reshaped by financial hardship, exam pressure, safety concerns, cultural expectations, and uneven access to academic capital. The mobilizations of young women are frequently constrained by gendered safety norms, while young men navigate pressures to enter informal labor markets. Despite these challenges, youth exhibit resilience, creative strategizing, and everyday forms of mobilization, such as negotiating family expectations, seeking informal learning spaces, and leveraging peer networks. By situating Colombo as a Global South urban context influenced by informality and postcolonial urban development, the paper contributes to discussions on youth agency and urban futures. It posits that aspirations themselves constitute a significant form of mobilization through which young people challenge structural inequalities and envision alternative futures. These insights bear implications for policy interventions aimed at supporting marginalized youth in rapidly transforming Southern cities.