Paper short abstract:

This paper follows the trajectories of three groups of “youth” actively involved in the economy of the central market in Kinshasa. The research explores how these trajectories reflect both a high degree of social improvisation and social disparities at the intersection of class and generation.

Paper long abstract:

In recent decades, youth as a research subject has attracted increasing interest in African anthropology (Thieme 2021; Cole & Durham 2009; Durham 2000; O'Brien 1996). While it is increasingly recognised that youth should not be conceived as a fixed age cohort (Trapido 2021; Watts 2018), it nevertheless remains a polarising research subject in many other respects. In studying youth participation in African urban economies, for instance, the risk is often to consider them either as liberal autonomous agents or as “overdetermined victims” (Durham 2000: 113; see also Thieme 2021). Expanding on Durham’s idea of the “social shifter”, we suggest that one way to overcome such dichotomy is to examine both individual youth trajectories as well as the history and processes of the social categorisation of youth. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted on Kinshasa’s informal economy between 2021 and 2023, this article shows the extent to which the participation of youth in the informal economy in Kinshasa reflects a high degree of social improvisation in the urban economy and highlights the creation of certain subjectivities. Moreover, the analysis also reveals that such categorisation results from and creates social disparities that are accentuated at the intersection of class and generation.