YOUNG PEOPLE’S VISIONS FOR LIFE IN THE COUNTRYSIDE IN LATIN AMERICA

Abtract

Young people steer their life trajectories against the backdrop of profound transformations of rurality. They are considered protagonists in the present and future of rural areas; however, their experiences and perspectives on life in, and away from, the countryside have been scarcely acknowledged in academia. Considering conceptual thoughts on new mobilities, place-based belonging, and new ruralities, we argue that young people are a highly dynamic and continually reassessing group. In four case studies realized independently in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Mexico, we closely involved young people with multiple participative methods to express their perceptions, concerns, and demands. We experiment on ways to integrate our insights for future comparative studies. Beyond the diversity in local contexts, we found convergences in young people’s visions, which motivate them to stay or leave, with wider implications for the sustainability of rural places. “Living in between” thereby encapsulates multifaceted hybrid possible countrysides away from constraining dichotomic views.

Keywords::

• (im)mobilities
• Latin America
• rural places
• socio-environmental transformation
• young people

Acknowledgments

Special thanks go to the young people and their communities who generously shared their experiences with us. Cristina de la Vega-Leinert is particularly grateful to Cristina García Ángel and Edmundo Gómez Horta and Isabel Mamani. Many thanks from Julia Kieslinger to the local co-investigators Ángel Hualpa Erazo and Paola Rengel Vega who actively took part in the field work. Marcela Jiménez-Moreno is especially thankful to the people of Tatahuicapan, and to Ismael Arce Estrada and Esteban E. Ramírez Cruz for their valuable help during fieldwork. Cornelia Steinhäuser sincerely thanks Barbara Göbel, Gabriel Barba and Hugo Díaz Cabana for guidance and access to the community in its reciprocity with Mother Earth. Finally, we appreciate the comments of the two anonymous reviewers who contributed to more structure and clarity in our text.

Notes

¹ https://www.americas2019.uni-bonn.de/.

² With the term “countryside” we refer to the emic concept of “el campo” as it is used by the participants of our research.

³ The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations states that, “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.’’ World Food Summit 1996, Rome Declaration on World Food Security, http://www.fao.org/3/w3613e/w3613e00.htm. This definition characterizes food security with four dimensions: availability, access, use, and stability.

Additional information

Funding

A. Cristina de la Vega-Leinert was funded by the German Research Foundation under Project Grant Nr. VE 659/2-1. The research of Marcela Jiménez-Moreno was partially funded by UNAM-PAPIIT (project IN304519) and CONACyT (doctoral grant 298769). The research fieldwork of Cornelia Steinhäuser was funded by the international program IP@WWU of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).