Political Economy of Youth and Migration

Genevieve Ritchie is a Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Western Sydney University and the co-editor of Marxism and Migration.

“This book is based on significant original research among refugee youth and it applies a Marxist feminist analysis, which offers insight into relations of class struggle and the processes of alienation, racialization and heteropatriarchal securitization that refugee youth confront in elite political and social interventions. It is essential reading for people interested in the intersections of migration and refugee studies, development and NGOs, politics of gender and youth, and anti-imperialism. It absolutely makes a vital contribution to a critically important subject, and makes a significant perspective rarely accounted for outside specialist studies engaging and accessible for students and readers.”Hannah Cross, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Westminster"This book is a welcome addition to the growing field of the political economy of youth, that draws on a decade of research with young adult refugees in Canada, who come from across Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. The voices of these young refugees that are central throughout the book vividly present narratives of displacement, arrival and struggle not just in Canada, but in home countries and countries of transit as well. Ritchie’s concern with tracing the institutional structures, material conditions and political agency that shape the lives of refugee youth are a powerful way of overcoming the critique of political economy as being deterministic, and pointing to possibilities of transnational solidarity and transformation even within conditions of enormous challenge and constraint."Mayssoun Sukarieh, Senior Lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies, King's College London"How can we locate and understand the trajectory and transformations of youth displaced from the Middle East to Canada within the transnational 'youth complex', geopolitics, and global capitalism? Genevieve Ritchie's lucid and critical investigation centres the narratives and reflexivity of young refugees, while offering an ambitious, multi-scalar and multidimensional analysis informed by multiple theoretical, conceptual and critical tools. This is an impressive book, informed by a sophisticated feminist-Marxist analysis, and rich with insight."Audrey Macklin, Professor of Law and Chair in Human Rights, University of Toronto

• 1. Introduction. 2. Ideologically Constructing the Youth Complex. 3. Displacement, Dispossession, and Migration. 4. Access to Education for Refugees: A Lost Generation Looms. 5. Digital Capitalism and Youth Participation. 6. Theorizing from the Limits of Liberalism. 7. Class Struggle: A Dialectical Approach to Youth and Migration. 8. Building a Praxis Beyond Citizenship and Rights.