Paper short abstract:

By highlighting the rural-urban connections among young male labor migrants in Ghana I aim at depicting the meanings and future-orientation of urban misery and disillusionment and move beyond popular conceptualizations of youth in a state of ‘Waithood’.

Paper long abstract:

At first sight, today's young rural-urban labor migrants in many West African cities may fit perfectly well into what Alcinda Honwana has conceptualized as a state of "Waithood": facing a massive decline of money-making opportunities, an increasing disconnection from a modern youth culture and a fear of not being able to meet parental and peer expectations at home they seem to be excluded from social participation and mobility. However, by taking a group of northern Ghanaian male youth working in the informal load carrying business in Accra as an empirical example, I aim at depicting the limits of "Waithood" and show how this concept is based on a constricted urban perspective which excludes other possible approaches (e.g. rural and rural-urban) that could draw a more nuanced picture of today's young generation beyond social exclusion and immobility. I will show how the experience of miserable and disillusioned working and living conditions in the city nevertheless implies a promising future-orientation towards the achievement of individual goals. It is upon return to their rural home communities that most youths are able to negotiate higher social positions with peers and parents and thus give meaning to their seemingly disappointing urban experience. Far from romanticizing "village life", this rural-urban perspective depicts the future-oriented meaning of disillusion in the urban context beyond a state of "Waithood" and identifies the epistemological limits of this concept.