Young people’s agency in Zimbabwe’s precarious informal sector

ABSTRACT

In Zimbabwe’s ‘new’ dispensation, young people’s agency pertaining to the precarious informal sector and livelihoods has so far received limited attention in youth research, youth literature and social policy of the Global South. This article seeks to reduce lacunae in this regard by exploring their lived experiences, situated meanings and agency, basing on Harare City as the heuristic case study. Against prolonged socioeconomic and political crises, spiralling unemployment and poverty, enduring generational divides and accumulating waithood, the ‘new’ dispensation is yet to deliver on developmental transformation for the benefit of young people. Detached from the general view of young people as passive victims of socioeconomic problems, the article advances them as agentive actors in pursuing livelihood pathways and improving individual and household wellbeing. Improving young people lives should be based on empirical evidence of their diverse situations and agency.

KEYWORDS:

• Young people’s agency
• urban informal sector
• precarious livelihoods; ‘new’ dispensation
• transformative social policy
• Zimbabwe

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data supporting the results or analyses presented in the paper are available but not linked to a hyperlink, DOI or other persistent identifier associated with the data set(s).