Lorraine van Blerk

This paper offers a rapid systematic map of existing qualitative literature on the relationship(s) between marine environments and youth in a changing climate. Building upon recent public, scientific, and scholarly trends that draw attention to the value the ocean holds for both socio‐economic prosperity and climate regulation, this systematic map asks: What evidence emerges from qualitative studies of youth engagement with marine environments in a changing climate? The mapping identified 20 articles thematically coded under three categories—namely, (i) youth experiences of marine environments and climate change, (ii) marine‐based pedagogical approaches to climate change, and (iii) creative strategies and new media. Along with these 3 main categories, the mapping identified different cross‐cutting themes that the 20 studies share. These were discussed as (a) the importance of intergenerational dynamics and intergenerational justice, (b) the lack of youth's insights in marine‐based climate discourses, and (c) the need for place‐based socio‐cultural and economic interventions. After presenting and discussing the results, this rapid systematic map concludes by indicating areas for further research. Specifically, it highlights the need for more place‐based, granular approaches that engage young people on their own terms and experiences as having tremendous value for articulating more ocean‐ and climate‐sensitive interventions. At the same time, it cautions that those same interventions must feed into wider socio‐economic and institutional dynamics that account for the historical responsibilities of a changing climate.

Recent times have seen multiple stressors impacting young people's life experiences globally and creating challenging contexts for growing up. Heightened awareness of climate change has created fut...

Social networks within Southern Africa's rural communities are often highly interconnected through kin relations. Research has demonstrated that historically older people age in place within kin networks, typically in multi‐generational households, which are integral to their ageing experiences, such as through intergenerational contracts obliging younger generations to look after their older relatives. However, recent social policy favours aiding individuals experiencing poverty, including older people, with social cash transfers (SCTs) such as old age pensions. This paper explores the social and spatial impacts of pension payments on older people's care networks. In‐depth participatory research undertaken in one rural community in Lesotho reveals the myriad interconnected and relational flows of cash transfers. We argue that SCT pension payments transform the position of older people within their social networks and transform interdependent communities spatially through their wider dispersal. The paper thus shows how the flow of pensions is changing socio‐spatial care relations and re‐positioning older people as economic contributors in their communities.

Young people living and working on the streets of sub-Saharan African cities have complex and mutable relationships with the future. Social and economic marginalisation constrains agency and results in futures split between meeting short-term needs, to ensure safety and survival, and imagined destinations of adulthood, where situations of poverty and risk are resolved. Constructing a future is contingent not only on immediate and changing circumstances but is also an instrument of self-efficacy, where imagination enables individuals to cope with danger and uncertainty in the present. This chapter draws from in-depth qualitative research undertaken with children and youth growing up on the streets in the three African cities of Accra, Harare, and Bukavu. It explores the tensions in making a future, the compromises driven by poverty, and the ways in which imagined futures are mobilised to inform decision-making in the present. The chapter shows how young people living on the streets vary and delay their plans to deal with short-term challenges. It also examines how visions of future adulthood, where young people have secured social status and stability, both have essential utility for coping in the present and provide important insights into the realities of everyday life.

Research excellence is at the heart of the University of Dundee. Our success depends not just on what we research, but on the cultures we create; the values, expectations, and behaviours that shape how we work together. We celebrate the diversity of our people, disciplines, and methods, building inclusive cultures that enable curiosity-driven discovery and impactful research. Guided by national concordats and sector standards, Dundee has a strong foundation on which to grow. This strategy looks forward, setting out how we will strengthen our research cultures in the years ahead.

This article seeks to engage in a critical debate around the sociocultural contexts and academic understandings of agency and vulnerability. It proposes an agency–vulnerability nexus as a useful conceptual tool to consider these linked concepts and how they have been related in the literature on children and youth and across social and cultural contexts. We use the term ‘nexus’ as we seek to explore ‘agency’ and ‘vulnerability’ not as antonymic binaries but as multi-dimensional connections created both by individuals and by the sociocultural settings in which they inhabit. Drawing on secondary analysis of data from Growing up on the Streets, a longitudinal ethnographic research project where street children and youth were both participants and researchers, this article examines the applicability of the agency–vulnerability nexus among young people living in street settings. It concludes that by acknowledging a plurality of conceptual perspectives around children and youth agency, the agency–vulnerability nexus can be used conceptually to better understand street children and youth’s experiences.

Attempts to boost rural development in the Global South tend to focus on ways in which people can transform their lives. Interventions are often designed to help overcome specific envisioned constraints and push individuals onto a pathway out of poverty. Research has contributed to nuancing this vision by documenting the non‐linearity of pathways, which often results in people being left in limbo or stuck, rather than moving forward. Based on a study in two villages in Malawi and Lesotho, this article argues that even these nuances do not fully capture the real‐life experiences of the 63 young people who participated. Interviews tracing the course of their lives between 2007–08 and 2016–17 reveal trajectories that are circular rather than linear, and show the detrimental effects of being stuck in these frustrating loops of taking action without progressing. Conceptualizing rural young people's livelihood trajectories in contexts of severe poverty as loops highlights the structural issues that need to be addressed if their lives are to be transformed. Understanding development as emancipation from sources of unfreedom means focusing on the structural constraints that keep some people in poverty, and the importance of attaining agency if they are to put their needs on the agenda and demand basic rights.