Social Death and Life Opportunities

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29340/en.v4n7.171

Keywords:

africa, civil war, young people, social death, violence

Abstract

This article analyzes the military recruitment of urban youths in West Africa and analyzes their involvement in conflicts as a form of “social navigation”. We propose a perspective on the youth that assumes this generational category, both a social process and a position. The article illustrates how urban youths navigate their social links and the options that arise from wartime situations to escape social death, which otherwise is the main characteristic of their situation. When describing youth as a time of stagnation and rupture of the social existence of young people in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, wartime clearly becomes an area of possibilities, rather than just a space of death. Thus, the concept of social navigation offers deep insights into the cross-play between objective structures and subjective initiatives. This analytical perspective helps us give meaning to the sometimes-fatalistic ways and tactics with which youths struggle to broaden their horizons of possibilities in a world of conflict, unrest and diminishing resources, and shows us how facing conflict becomes a matter of balance between social death and the violent opportunities of life.

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Author Biography

  • Henrik Erdman Vigh, University of Copenhagen - Department of Anthropology

    Henrik E. Vigh He obtained his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Copenhagen. He is currently a researcher at the Center for Rehabilitation and Research for Victims of Torture in Copenhagen. His research deals with youth trajectories in conflict areas in both West Africa and Europe; Thus, he has recently become interested in the study of the migrations of undocumented Africans in Europe and the networks they develop to survive and in which they remain trapped.

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Published

2021-03-23

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