The capacity to aspire: young persons and gender–age relations in southern Tajikistan and North India

Colette Harris

Central Asian Survey, 2019, vol. 38, issue 4, 460-475

Abstract: Rather than studying young men's career- and/or economic-based aspirations, this article explores the obstacles that hinder youths of both sexes in gerontocratic southern Tajikistan and North India from developing the capacity to make their own life choices. Focusing mainly on the selection of marital partner and largely on women, I explore the narratives of those who have never even dreamed of a good life, of others who have dreamed but been unable to actualize their dreams, of a few who have started to plan the way forward, and of a tiny number who actually managed to achieve their aspirations, teasing out the influences that facilitate this. I suggest that even educated youths with some control over their public lives are constricted by their family relations and that it requires quite specific support to defy one’s family, which can create significant vulnerabilities in settings with no other safety net.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02634937.2019.1642850 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ccasxx:v:38:y:2019:i:4:p:460-475

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ccas20

DOI: 10.1080/02634937.2019.1642850

Access Statistics for this article

Central Asian Survey is currently edited by Raphael Jacquet

More articles in Central Asian Survey from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().