Paper short abstract:

This presentation elaborates on how university graduates in Mali’s capital city Bamako act in uncertain present contexts. It will be demonstrated how they are preparing today for the futures they imagine – or, put differently, how graduates are “opening up la chance”.

Paper long abstract:

More than 10 000 students graduate every year from the Universities of Bamako, Mali. They grew up with the claim that studying is a privilege and the promise that education secures employment and, therefore, a livelihood. However, they encounter severe difficulties finding a job that corresponds to their qualification or entering the labor market in general. That situation impacts their today's actions as well as their imagination and planning of their futures.

This paper elaborates on two questions: what do graduates do today? And to what extend are their present actions geared towards the futures they imagine? One answer lies in what Malian graduates refer to as "opening up la chance". La chance is a phenomenon graduates are preparing for today. "La chance" separates the present from the future since it enables a different present - a present that has been imagined as the future in the past.

The ideas presented are based on three periods of ethnographic fieldwork in Bamako during which biographical and narrative follow-up interviews were conducted with thirty university graduates. The long-term character of the study enabled an understanding of graduates' social contexts, their present actions and their pathways into the future. It is ultimately seized how futures develop and are being developed.