Young people 'making it work' in a changing climate

Abstract: Globally, young people face weak labour market demand and have been particularly susceptible to recent livelihood stresses and shocks linked to climate change. In this article, we consider what happens when young people face intersecting challenges including climate change. While much of the literature focuses on barriers to work and how to break these, we consider young people’s struggles and successes in securing and maintaining work. The focus is on Uganda, demographically one of the world’s youngest countries and home to a largely ‘underemployed’ cohort of young people. Our findings identify some of the many ways in which climate change disrupts young people’s livelihoods. Young people are already proactively responding to climate change. This points to the need for other actors to learn from young people’s existing endeavours, to build in more support and opportunities, manage risk and insecurity, and construct a more climate change-resilient infrastructure.

Keywords: Uganda, climate change, interview, survey, shocks, stresses, work, livelihood

Article posted to the Journal of the British Academy, volume 11, supplementary issue 3 (Being and Becoming: Uncertain Youth Futures)