Paper short abstract:

I explore the role of knowledge acquisition in the transition of young indigenous Amazonians from rural to urban environments, particularly in Pucallpa, Peru. It highlights the link between ethnicity and historical inequalities, as well as the Amazonian youth's identity negotiation as migrants.

Paper long abstract:

During the last decades, native Amazonians have faced major changes in their living conditions. Young indigenous people migrate from rural communities to big cities, mostly to study at local universities. This way, urban life and formal education have become prominent for native migrants. My paper focuses on indigenous youth who study and live in Pucallpa, the second largest metropolis of the Peruvian Amazon, located on the banks of the Ucayali River; a multicultural milieu in which the majority ‘mestizo’ (non-indigenous) population coexists with more than twenty different ethnic groups. Against the background of an ongoing rural to urban transition process, young Amazonians negotiate between a traditional and culture-rich imagined rural past, and an uncertain urban present they struggle to fully adapt to. Based on thirty-three months of fieldwork, my research explores the relevance of knowledge acquisition for young indigenous migrants who are often invested, by their families and society at large, with the moral duty to carry on their elders’ endangered cultural heritage. In cities like Pucallpa, young indigenous people’s status as migrants —either temporary or permanent— intersects with their ethnicity and historical social and educational inequalities, within scenarios of displacement and fragmentation in the urban environment. Building on growing debates on the reflexive turn in the scholarship of migration, my contribution focuses on the relevance of knowledge acquisition for young Amazonians’ ethnic status and for the unfolding of processes of identity negotiation as migrants.