ABSTRACT
This contribution explores the perspectives of Laotian rural youngsters in the context of a major agrarian transformation, in which large monoculture plantations have permeated both the physical landscape and the daily lives of people. The study uses concepts from agrarian and youth studies to help us understand the lived experiences of being (or ceasing to be) a young farmer in rapidly changing agrarian structures. Based on ethnographic research in the province of Champasak, the study analyses how young people’s aspirations of a ‘better life’, either verbally expressed or enacted through other media, play a role in the way they understand and cope with outcomes of livelihood change vis-à-vis more powerful actors, including their parental households. Although young people’s aspirations reflect a desire for a rural modern life, which may include smallholder farming, there is a material impossibility to acquire or inherit farmland. In addition, subjective meanings around the idea of ‘being young’ unveil a push for salaried work (off-farm), which more rapidly fulfils the need for autonomy and peer identification. Land concessions for rubber and coffee plantations, which predominantly target young labour in the studied sites, have become a source of such salaried work, but not without major constraints and exploitative situations for the majority.
