Project description

The research project investigated the typical biographical experiences of young adults in work and family lives in Senegal. Within sub-Saharan Africa, Senegal has had a relatively strong implementation of liberal principles of democracy, educational expansion and little violent conflict. However, the liberal promises of meritocracy, prosperity and intergenerational upward mobility are increasingly contradicting young adults’ experiences, who have few job prospects despite educational expansion and mostly feel that their generation is worse off than their parents’ generation economically. Such unfulfilled promises may lead to disillusionment among young people, prompting them to either seek alternative pathways to adulthood through migration or to engage in political activism in an effort to improve their prospects in Senegal.

Research Questions

• What factors drive young adults in Senegal to pursue alternative pathways to adulthood, such as migration or political activism?

• What strategies do young adults use to cope with adversity, and how do they perceive liberalism and its alternatives?

Research Approach

The project adopted a life course approach, combining qualitative and quantitative longitudinal data analysis. The team collected three waves of qualitative autobiographical interviews with young adults in Senegal to trace their biographical experiences and support of political protests between 2021 and 2024, a period marked by multiple youth protests and political change. In addition, quantitative analyses of the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) identified typical life course profiles of young adults and examined how these profiles have changed across generations over recent decades. Finally, the project drew on data from the SCRIPTS PALS survey to assess attitudes towards liberalism in Senegal and compiled data from a variety of further sources, including qualitative expert interviews with leading personalities of protest movements and the Mouride Muslim brotherhood, to trace the history of social movements in Senegal.

Outreach and dissemination

A special focus of the project was to place the voices and perspective of young adults at the center of this research. To this end, all stages of data collection were co-designed with a team of Senegalese researchers. The results of the qualitative interviews were shared and discussed with the interview participants in a Youth Assembly held in Dakar in October 2024. This event was organised jointly by the SCRIPTS Knowledge Exchange Lab (KEL) and the regional office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Dakar.

Over the course of the three-day event, the participants in our data collection engaged in discussions about the preliminary findings and key questions, such as the challenges and opportunities of collaboration between the Senegalese and European research teams. Additionally, local activists, policymakers and researchers joined the interview participants to address the issues that young adults face in contemporary Senegal. These included the widespread lack of formal employment, barriers to entrepreneurship, shifting gender relations, irregular migration, human rights and the fight against neocolonial dependencies.

Publications

Niati, Noella B. 2024: Navigating the In-Between: A Cross-Cultural Researcher’s Fluid Positionality in West Africa, International Journal of Qualitative Methods 23.

Fasang, Anette E. / Gruijters, Rob J. / Van Winkle, Zachary 2024: The life course boat: A theoretical framework for analyzing variation in family lives across time, place, and social location, Journal of Marriage and Family 86(5): 1586-1606.

Niati, Noella B. / Shah, Payal P. 2022: Transhiphop pedagogy and epistemic disobedience in Senegal, International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 45(3): 271-283.

Cabib, Ignacio / Cooper, Adam / Hu, Y. / Fasang, Anette E. / Gruijters, Rob J. Young Adult life Courses in the Global South. Guest editors of Special issue in Advances in Life course Research (forthcoming).

Alber, E. / Clemens, I. / Fasang, Anette E. Young men and women and livelihoods in Africa. Proposed Guest Editorship of special issue, under review.

Conference presentations

Fasang, Anette E. / Niati, Noella B. / Gruijters, Rob J. / Ciss, Mariéme / Kamara, Assa / Ndour, Nancy: High Hopes and broken Promises: Coping with unfulfilled occupational aspirations in Senegal. Paper presented at the ISA RC28 2023 Summer Meeting, Ann Arbor: Michigan; as invited keynote speaker at the 2022 LIVES conference, University of Geneva: Switzerland; and at the 2024 COES Conference, Viña del Mar: Chile.

Fasang, Anette E. / Ndiaye, Sokhna. R. / Niati, Noella B. Young Adults Making a Living in Senegal: How Relations Open and Close Access to Economic Opportunities. Paper accepted at the ISA 2025 Forum of Sociology, Rabat: Morocco.

Ndiaye, Sokhna R. / Fasang, Anette E. / Niati, Noella B. Contesting Post-Colonial Government: Social Movements in Senegal from the 1990s to the Present. Paper accepted at the ISA 2025 Forum of Sociology, Rabat: Morocco.