Land concessions and rural youth in Southern Laos

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2157381
AutoresGilda Sentíes Portilla (autor de correspondencia)
Año2017
Volumen44
Número6
Páginas1255-1274
Fecha de publicación2017-11-02
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Journal of Peasant Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0306-6150 • E-ISSN: 1743-9361
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/03066150.2017.1396450
OpenAlexW2769484463
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas14
Referencias citadas23

This contribution explores the perspectives of Laotian rural youngsters in the context of a major agrarian transformation, in which large monoculture plantations have permeated both the physical landscape and the daily lives of people. The study uses concepts from agrarian and youth studies to help us understand the lived experiences of being (or ceasing to be) a young farmer in rapidly changing agrarian structures. Based on ethnographic research in the province of Champasak, the study analyses how young people's aspirations of a 'better life', either verbally expressed or enacted through other media, play a role in the way they understand and cope with outcomes of livelihood change vis-à-vis more powerful actors, including their parental households. Although young people's aspirations reflect a desire for a rural modern life, which may include smallholder farming, there is a material impossibility to acquire or inherit farmland. In addition, subjective meanings around the idea of 'being young' unveil a push for salaried work (off-farm), which more rapidly fulfils the need for autonomy and peer identification. Land concessions for rubber and coffee plantations, which predominantly target young labour in the studied sites, have become a source of such salaried work, but not without major constraints and exploitative situations for the majority

Agrarian society · Agriculture · Autonomy · Context (archaeology · Economic growth · Economics · Ethnography · Geography · Impossibility · Livelihood · Monoculture · Participant observation · Peasant · Political science · Social science · Socioeconomics · Sociology · Work (physics · Youth participation · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Ecology