Despite young people’s presence as targets of development interventions and as a sub-field within wider developmental concerns, generational perspectives pertaining to young people remain too often absent. This introduction to a special issue outlines the analytical approach of ‘generationing’ development. It argues that life phases matter and seeks to explore how young people’s agency shapes and is shaped by the changing terms of social reproduction brought about by development.
In development research, the variable of chronological age is typically employed only in relation to young people and older people. Many have noted the expanding neo-liberal labour market providing new employment opportunities, but there is little discussion about how development transforms the opportunity structures shaping young lives and how young people renegotiate their generational position in society within these changing contexts, and in doing so re-negotiate notions of childhood and youth.
This paper introduces a number of articles within the journal issue which illustrate that age is far more social than chronological, gaining its meaning in the context of larger social forces. These articles re-think development as distinctly generational in its dynamics, and overcome the limitations of common categorising approaches. In doing so it shows the importance of studying young lives in relation to people in other life phases, and also of theorising material obtained from research with children and youth in relation to broader debates in development studies.
