Through the concept of "social navigation," this book sheds light on the mobilization of urban youth in West Africa. Social navigation offers a perspective on praxis in situations of conflict and turmoil. It provides insights into the interplay between objective structures and subjective agency, thus enabling us to make sense of the opportunistic, sometimes fatalistic and tactical ways in which young people struggle to expand the horizons of possibility in a world of conflict, turmoil and diminishing resources.

Henrik E. Vigh is a researcher at the Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims in Copenhagen. He holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen and has worked on issues of youth and conflict in both Europe and West Africa. He is currently researching undocumented West African migrants in Europe and the networks that they depend on, develop and are caught up in.

Acknowledgements

PART I: INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1. Mbuli the Victorious: The Micro-history of an Aguenta
Chapter 2. Perspectives and Positions

PART II: THE AGUENTAS

Chapter 3. Becoming Aguentas
Chapter 4. Wars without Enemies

PART III: SOCIAL NAVIGATION

Chapter 5. The Social Moratorium of Youth
Chapter 6. Dubriagem and Social Navigation: Constructing Social Trajectories through War

PART IV: ON SHIFTING GROUND

Chapter 7. Inhabiting Unstable Terrains: The Everyday of Decline and Conflict
Chapter 8. From Negritude to Ineptitude: On Horizons and Broken Imaginaries

PART V: IN APPEASEMENT?

Chapter 9. Recategorising Men as Children: Bottom-up Reconciliation
Chapter 10. Closure

Bibliography
Index