Paper short abstract:

Instead of seeing rural educated young people as failing to live up to their urban modern potential, we need to acknowledge that they, too, are actively navigating the constraints they face, and contribute in shaping their own, and their community’s futures.

Paper long abstract:

In Indonesia, education is a dominant in contemporary development discourse. This discourse is associated with processes of deagrarianisation and urbanisation, in which educated youth are considered to be the vanguard. During their education, they are inculcated with their potential and responsibility to develop their country. They are bombarded with images of the good life as modern urban consumers. For rural youth, their education implies mobility: not only in spatial terms (i.e. urbanisation), but also in socioeconomic status. They expect upward social mobility; an expectation fuelled by the rapid circulation of images and ideas of modernity and consumption.

Based on long-term fieldwork with educated youth in a rural area on the island of Flores (East Indonesia), I critique this discourse. I argue that despite ongoing deagrarianisation, many educated youth return from their urban-based studies to their rural natal communities. However, due to limited job opportunities in these communities, they experience so-called troubled education-to-work transitions. Often, this is referred to as them 'being stuck'. This depicts these young people as passive, isolated and immobile. In contrast, I argue that they exhibit remarkable resilience and creativity in dealing with their situation. Moreover, they manage to be truly part of global flows of images and ideas. This thus means we have to rethink rural educated youth: instead of seeing them as failing to live up to their urban modern potential, we need to acknowledge that they, too, are actively navigating the constraints they face, and contribute in shaping their own, and their community's futures.