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Paper long abstract

Based on intensive fieldwork conducted among Betsileo and Vakinankaratra children and youth living in the city of Antsirabe (Highlands Madagascar), my paper focuses on both crisis and imagination from a children-oriented approach.

After the political collapse of 2002, the current generation of children has recently experienced a political crisis in 2009 when, following months of demonstrations, the leader of the opposition Rajoelina toppled the President Ravalomanana with the army's backing: schools were closed and the island has been ostracized by international community. As the everyday life of schoolchildren has changed, I explore how the discourse about future, formal education and gender identities are re-shaped by Malagasy youngsters under the light of this crisis.

By collecting girls' and boys' narratives and teachers' points of view, I describe how children's itineraries and their imaginative landscapes are affected by the perception of crisis and their "coming of age" in a unstable country. At the same time, I underline how imagination can be used by children themselves as a tool of finding a (gendered) place in a postcolonial society.