ABSTRACT

Discussions about young people and their troubled education-to-work transitions in the global south usually concern urban case studies, in which young people are typically described as if they are outside the normal flow of things. By contrast, this current paper focuses on rural tertiary-educated young people (aged 20–30) on the island of Flores, East Indonesia. These young people try – and are enabled by their communities – to act as responsible community members through what they called ‘having semangat’, a term connoting commitment and spiritedness, being lively and passionate. The analysis of having semangat stimulates us to rethink the common link between young people and upward mobility, and contests an image of young people as potential social failures who direct themselves to the margins when they fail to comply with hegemonic ideals of success.

摘要

关于年轻人和他们在全球南方陷入困境的教育到工作过渡的讨论通常涉及城市案例研究，其中年轻人通常被描述为好像他们处于正常的事物流动之外。相比之下，本文目前的重点是印度尼西亚东部弗洛雷斯岛上受过高等教育的年轻人（20-30 岁）。这些年轻人试图——并在他们的社区的支持下——通过他们所谓的“拥有semangat ”，成为有责任感的社区成员，这个词意味着承诺和精神，活泼和热情。有semangat的分析 激励我们重新思考年轻人与向上流动之间的共同联系，并质疑年轻人作为潜在社会失败者的形象，当他们未能遵守成功的霸权理想时，他们会将自己引向边缘。