Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on ethnographic research to illustrate the vagueness of concepts as employment and unemployment among Burkinabe university graduates. The focus thereby is on their self-perception and practices when coping with a delayed entry to the job market.

Paper long abstract:

Burkina Faso's universities are often said to be factories producing unemployed persons. This paper draws on empirical research to show that the concept of unemployment is vague and even insignificant with regard to the social reality of university graduates. Speaking about unemployment turned out to be methodologically challenging. In fact, the term chômage (unemployment) seemed to be irrelevant; instead, graduates speak about activity and non-activity. Their worst case scenario for the period after graduation is "staying at home", being inactive and not trying to earn one's living independently. Thus, all of my informants are engaged in activities like minor jobs and unpaid internships. Those are not labelled as employment, and neither are jobs which are not equal to one's educational degree. The difficulty of attributing a status to the masses of young graduates leads to a societal image which is unfavorable, and this is where discourses as the one of universities as factories of unemployed originate. By illustrating the self-perception and practices of young graduates it is shown that concepts of employment and unemployment often are indistinguishable. Moreover, this paper aims to demonstrate that graduates try to access their aspired futures by practices which are based on the imagination of them moving through time towards their objectives. Those are closely linked to a stable and well-paid job. Young graduate's life-courses gain their dynamic dimension less from the passage of time or the fact of being blocked, but rather from an emotional orientation that they coin as optimism and hope.