ABSTRACT
In this case study, gendered livelihood strategies by rural migrant adolescents and young people in urban Ethiopia are conceptualised as possible ‘alternative citizenships’ where people remain far from institutional politics. Poverty and marginality shape young people’s future imaginaries and the formation of social and political identities over time. Through everyday acts of resistance, migrant youth become urban within and between the gendered spaces of informal self-employment they occupy, and through visualisations of a desired future that drives their individual and collective economic strategies and aspirations of a better life. This case study shows how everyday livelihood practices can become sites of citizenship formation under conditions characterised by structural marginalisation and deep-seated gender inequalities.
