Not raised ‘to make big decisions’: Young people’s agency and livelihoods in rural Pakistan

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cg.authorship.typesCGIAR and advanced research instituteen
cg.contributor.affiliationWageningen University & Researchen
cg.contributor.affiliationInternational Maize and Wheat Improvement Centeren
cg.contributor.crpMaize
cg.contributor.crpWheat
cg.contributor.donorBill & Melinda Gates Foundationen
cg.coverage.countryPakistan
cg.coverage.iso3166-alpha2PK
cg.coverage.regionAsia
cg.coverage.regionSouthern Asia
cg.creator.identifierPatti Petesch: 0000-0001-6444-9032en
cg.creator.identifierLone Badstue: 0000-0001-8848-7498en
cg.howPublishedFormally Publisheden
cg.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1080/08039410.2022.2071333en
cg.isijournalISI Journalen
cg.issn1891-1765en
cg.issue2en
cg.journalForum for Development Studiesen
cg.reviewStatusPeer Reviewen
cg.subject.ilriAGRICULTUREen
cg.subject.ilriLIVELIHOODSen
cg.volume49en
dc.contributor.authorPetesch, Pattien
dc.contributor.authorBadstue, Lone B.en
dc.contributor.authorRahut, Dil Bahaduren
dc.contributor.authorAli, Akhteren
dc.date.accessioned2022-09-07T11:51:46Zen
dc.date.available2022-09-07T11:51:46Zen
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/121160
dc.titleNot raised ‘to make big decisions’: Young people’s agency and livelihoods in rural Pakistanen
dcterms.abstractWe examine young people's testimonies about their capacity to make important decisions and their livelihood experiences from agricultural communities that span Pakistan's countryside. Our analysis is guided by theories of agency that focus on how a young person's capacity to identify and act on goals is mediated by their local opportunity structure – shaping their household relations, livelihood choices, and prevailing social norms. We apply comparative and contextual qualitative analysis methods to our dataset of 12 village cases, which include 24 sex-specific youth focus groups. We also present a secondary survey analysis. We find high rural employment levels among young men in recent years, and a decline in rural young women's employment from already low levels. The young study participants mainly observe limited capacity to make important decisions. They repeatedly attribute this to expectations of strict deference to elders and other norms about their gender, young age, junior household position, marital status, and socio-economic standing. They also report negotiating and resisting confining norms; however, young women's agency appears especially constrained by norms that discourage their physical mobility and visible economic roles. We examine two villages where some youth express healthier levels of agency and more desirable economic opportunities than others, and the significance of kinship relations and fluid norms in this environment. We call for models of young people's agency that register more effectively the importance of household relations, the gatekeeper role of elders, and the contextual and fluid properties of norms, as these dynamics both constrain and enable young people's agency.en
dcterms.accessRightsOpen Access
dcterms.audienceScientistsen
dcterms.available2022-05-20en
dcterms.bibliographicCitationPetesch, P., Badstue, L., Rahut, D.B. and Ali, A. 2022. Not raised ‘to make big decisions’: Young people’s agency and livelihoods in rural Pakistan. Forum for Development Studies 49(2):261-289.en
dcterms.extentpp. 261-289en
dcterms.issued2022-05-04en
dcterms.languageen
dcterms.licenseCC-BY-4.0
dcterms.publisherInforma UK Limiteden
dcterms.subjectlivelihoodsen
dcterms.subjectagricultureen
dcterms.typeJournal Article

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