Paper Short Abstract:

Based on immersive ethnographic fieldwork, this paper explores how youths in rural southern Mozambique (re/un)dream their futures amidst limited work and education opportunities. It examines local aspirations of wellbeing and social standing, highlighting their capacity to imagine new possibilities

Paper Abstract:

For how long can a young person defer their dream before it dries up like a raisin in the sun? In answering the panel’s call to explore what happens to dreams deferred, I would like to contribute a paper derived from my recent ethnographic fieldwork. Many young people in rural southern Mozambique upon graduating from high school find themselves with no options for employment or further education and training. Should they un-dream or re-dream the expectations tied to the affordances of attending school? Their dilemma reflects in Hughes’ contemplations on non-privileged citizens’ limited accessibility to “the good life”. My research examines the aspirations of Mozambican youths, whose dreams are embedded in local expressions of wellbeing and social standing, rather than individualism, mobility, and consumption as markers anticipated in other places. For Appadurai*, the capacity to aspire is not evenly distributed in society, and the poor simply seek to optimise the terms and conditions of their immediate local lives. This puts into question people’s plasticity to dream another dream for themselves - individually or collectively - as arguably any change not imposed is a change imagined for the self. I am currently writing my PhD thesis in Anthropology and would like to present my findings for the purpose of this conference through the lens of the deferred dream proposed by this panel.

*Appadurai, A (2004) The Capacity to Aspire: Culture and the Terms of Recognition. In V. Rao and M. Walton (Ed.) Culture and Public Action, Stanford University Press.