Paper short abstract:

Research on climate change and youth focuses on activism. This paper investigates emotional responses to the impact of climate change on youth livelihoods in Africa using empirical data from a two-year project with eight young African researchers to produce a virtual museum of youth livelihoods.

Paper long abstract:

Research on climate change and youth is dominated by a focus on activism, mobilisation and dissent. While attention to expressions of youth agency, within and beyond traditional political processes is important, in this paper I argue that emotional responses to the impact of climate change on youth livelihoods requires closer scrutiny. Specifically, I am interested in exploring young people’s affective experiences of the changing nature of work in the context of climate change concerns. As stable waged and salaried labour is increasingly accepted as elusive in precarious environments, the collective condition of individual insecurity disproportionately distributed amongst young people navigating uncertainty has been theorised in terms of ‘the hustle’ (Thieme 2017) as a response to prolonged states of ‘waithood’ (Honwana, 2012). How is this experience layered with climate anxieties? How do young people in Africa navigate experiences of ‘making do’ or ‘making a living’ in contexts shaped by ecological destruction? As young people in Africa navigate precarious labour markets, experiences of uncertainty are both normalized and affirmed – how does this in turn impact on their climate emotions? This paper offers empirical data and ethnographic accounts from a two-year project with eight young African researchers on a two-year fellowship in South Africa to produce a virtual museum of youth livelihoods on the continent. The paper aims to expand both current research on youth livelihoods and affective research on climate change; and include the voices of young people to widen space for youth in climate change research, beyond activism.