About Youth on the Move

Youth on the Move is a research project initiated by Ying Cheng (Peking University), Min Tang (CAUP-Tongji University), and Anuj Daga (SEA-Univ. of Mumbai) which seeks to investigate an urbanity that youth produce on the move -through short- and long term mobilities. 

‘Youth on the Move’ observes emerging socio-spatial practices of youth in African and Asian contexts, and examines their modes of moving and meaning-making through an embodied politics of performance. While 'youth' indexes a range of people across spectrums of class, gender, caste, including from (im)migrants, labour, women, early career researchers or students; practices of movement are oriented towards livelihoods, home making, political action or trans-local migration or even artistic expression.

How, why, and what are the multiple meanings of youth performing in Southern urban space; How do these different or shared practices of (im)mobility on the move inter-relate with or cross-refer each other? The project gathers urban scholars, architects, artists, curators and local youth groups from Asia and Africa for a collective contemplation through in-depth dialogues on un-peeling the multi-layered, mobile ‘Southern urbanity’.

The lectures in the series broaden theoretical debates under two key themes: 

1. The Time and Space of Youth: Situating Youth in Southern Cities examines the multi-layered conceptions of youth in a Southern context, and argues for alternative frameworks of understanding youth beyond terms like ‘boredom’ and ‘precarity’.  
2. Life on the Move: (Im)mobility and Daily Practices of the Youth approaches the translocal movements of youth from the perspective of everyday life.

We invite scholars from the diverse fields of urban studies, anthropology, sociology and culture studies to share their research and reflect on how these approaches enrich the understanding of youth living in the Global South. 

Schedule

Lecture 01 (19/10/2023)
Screening of the documentary “Eat-Bitter” and post-screening discussion with Ningyi Sun (Director of the documentary), Eileen Julien (Indiana University Bloomington), Dawei Ding (Beijing International Short Film Festival)

Lecture 02 (15/10/2023)
Adeline Masquelier (Tulane University)
Waiting for Thieves: Youth, Tea, and the Labor of Sitting in Niger

Lecture 03 (07/11/2023)
Biao Xiang (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)
The Personal Self and Worldviews: Chinese Youths’ Changing Perceptions about the World

Lecture 04 (16/11/2023)
Gautam Bhan (Indian Institute for Human Settlements) 
Notes Theorising Inequality in/from Place

Lecture 05 (23/11/2023)
Nomusa Makhubu (University of Cape Town)
Sizophum' Elokishini - Traversing the Anticity

Lecture 06 (30/11/2023)
Laure Assaf (NYU Abu Dhabi)
Becoming subjects in and through the city: The Arab youth of Abu Dhabi

Lecture 07 (07/12/2023)
Ka-Kin Cheuk (University of Southampton)
Diasporic Valuations of being ‘Young’ among the Indian traders in southeast China

Lecture 08 (08/12/2023)
Shilpa Phadke (Tata Institute of Social Sciences) 
Loitering

Lecture 09 (11/01/2024)
Bjørn Enge Bertelsen (University of Bergen)
Urbanism from above and below: Youth, politics and enclaving in Maputo

Lecture 10 (25/01/2024)
Tatiana Thieme (UCL Geography)
Multisituated and Multimeaning: Dancing with the Opacity and Unknowability of Hustling, Jugaad, la Debrouille and la Brega​​