Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Human Capital Theory and the Defectology of Aspirations in Policy Research on Rural Youth

  • Special Issue Article
  • Published:
The European Journal of Development Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This article turns a sceptical eye on policy studies of youth aspirations, and specifically the reported aspirations of the world’s rural youth for mobility from farming to non-farming, and rural to non-rural futures. Four large-scale multi-country studies on young people’s aspirations are reviewed, and compared with the findings of more detailed, in-depth, local studies. Aspirations, it is argued, are viewed (and researched) much too simplistically in the policy world. Examples from many parts of the world suggest a need for caution about prevailing narratives that ‘rural youth today are not interested in farming futures’. They underline the importance of a life-course and generational perspective on young people’s aspirations and their mobility out of, and perhaps later back into, farming.

Resumé

Cet article jette un regard sceptique sur les études politiques portant sur les aspirations des jeunes, et en particulier sur les aspirations que l’on rapporte des jeunes ruraux dans le monde, qui chercheraient à quitter le monde agricole et le monde rural pour un avenir non-agricole et non-rural. Quatre études multinationales à grande échelle sur les aspirations des jeunes sont passées en revue et sont comparées aux résultats d'études locales plus détaillées et approfondies. L’on soutient que les aspirations sont envisagées (et étudiées) de façon beaucoup trop simpliste dans le monde politique. Des exemples provenant de nombreuses parties du monde suggèrent qu’il faut être prudent quant aux discours dominants selon lesquels «les jeunes ruraux d'aujourd'hui ne sont pas intéressées par l'avenir agricole». Ils soulignent l'importance de garder en tête une perspective générationnelle qui suit le cours de la vie lorsque l’on considère les aspirations des jeunes et leur mobilité pour quitter l’agriculture, et peut-être plus tard, la retrouver.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. FAO: the UN Food and Agricultural Organization. IFAD: the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

  2. Despite the obvious links between the two themes (the future of family farming, and of rural youth), and that they originate from the same organization, the UN Decade documents don’t mention the IFAD Rural Youth report, and vice versa. A similar hiatus could be seen a decade earlier in the World Bank, whose 2007 World Development Report Development and the Next Generation hardly mentioned agriculture, while the 2008 World Development Report Agriculture for Development hardly mentioned youth (World Bank 2006, 2007). The two teams of specialists may be aware of each other’s existence, but do not seem to communicate, like ships passing in the night.

  3. By ‘defectology’ I mean the tendency to ascribe problems experienced by a particular social group to their individual shortcomings, rather than to larger structural forces and constraints in their environment.

  4. ‘Farm heads’ are the (self-reported) primary managers of the farm in farming households.

  5. McClelland’s theory of achievement motivation was famously de-bunked by Andre Gunder Frank (1971, pp. 45–53).

  6. Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Zambia, Guatemala, Bolivia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Viet Nam.

  7. It is not clear how many individual interviews and how many FGDs were conducted, or how the groups were composed. I have not been able to locate more detailed information on the methodology of this study.

  8. India, Mali, Malawi, Morocco, Mexico, Nigeria and the Philippines.

  9. The research project Becoming a young farmer: young people's pathways into farming in four countries (China, Canada, India and Indonesia) is funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

  10. With one small exception: the UNDFF report The Future of Family Farming in the Context of the 2030 Agenda has one brief mention of ‘the prevailing political economic structures that tend to bias food production and marketing towards large private companies in food systems. The latter aspect underpins a situation where family farmers in some contexts have their tenure rights to land and other natural resources impinged upon, with large industrial farms expanding the share of farmland and other natural resources under their control in many parts of the world’ (FAO-IFAD 2019b, p. 6).

References

  • Appadurai, A. 2004. The capacity to aspire: culture and the terms of recognition. In Culture and Public Action, ed. A. Appadurai, 59–84. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2012. Australian Social Trends, December 2012. (ausstats.abs.gov.au, downloaded 5 June, 2019)

  • Becker, G. 1964. Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Becker, G. 1994. Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education, Revised ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berckmoes, L., and B. White. 2014. Youth, farming and precarity in rural Burundi. European Journal of Development Research 26: 190–203.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bessant, J., R. Farthing, and R. Watts. 2017. The Precarious Generation: A Political Economy of Young People. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • BMZ. 2017. The voice of youth at the G20 conference: the rural future lab, and Rural future in figures: results of the SMS-based survey of 10,000 young people in Africa. In One World – No Hunger: Future of the Rural World. International G20 Conference, Berlin 27–28 April 2017. Bonn: Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

  • Bossenbroek, L., J.D. van der Ploeg, and M. Zwarteveen. 2015. Broken dreams? Youth experiences of agrarian change in Morocco's Saïss region. Cahiers Agricultures 24: 342–348.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Central Bureau of Statistics. 2013. Agricultural Census 2013. Jakarta: Central Bureau of Statistics.

    Google Scholar 

  • Central Bureau of Statistics. 1983. Agricultural Census 1983. Jakarta: Central Bureau of Statistics.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chinsinga, B., and M. Chasukwa. 2012. Youth, agriculture and land grabs in Malawi. IDS Bulletin 43 (6): 67–77.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Elias, M., N. Mudege, D.E. Lopez, D. Najjar, V. Kandiwa, J. Luis, J. Yila, et al. 2018. Gendered aspirations and occupations among rural youth, in agriculture and beyond: A cross-regional perspective. Journal of Gender, Agriculture and Food Security 3 (1): 82–107.

    Google Scholar 

  • FAO and IFAD. 2019. United Nations Decade of Family Farming 2019–2028. Global Action Plan. Rome: Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN, and International Fund for Agricultural Development.

  • FAO and IFAD. 2019b. United Nations Decade of Family Farming 2019–2028. The future of family farming in the context of the 2030 Agenda. Rome: Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN, and International Fund for Agricultural Development.

  • Flechtner, S. 2014. Aspiration Traps: When Poverty Stifles Hope. Inequality in Focus Series, Washington DC: The World Bank.

  • Foster, G.M. 1965. Peasant society and the image of limited good. American Anthropologist 67 (2): 293–315.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fox, I. and U. Kaul. 2018. The evidence is in: how should youth employment programmes in low-income countries be designed ? Policy Research Working Paper 8500. Washington DC: The World Bank.

  • Fox, I. 2019. Economic Participation of Rural Youth: What Matters? IFAD Research Series 46. Rome: International Fund for Agricultural Development.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frank, A.G. 1971. Sociology of Development and Underdevelopment of Sociology. London: Pluto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gurr, M. 2017. Limits of Liberation: Youth and Politics in Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement. PhD Dissertation, Syracuse University.

  • Heide-Ottosen, S. 2014. The Ageing of Rural Populations: Evidence on Older Farmers in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. London: HelpAge International.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huijsmans, R. 2013. ‘Doing Gendered Age’: Older mothers and migrant daughters negotiating care work in rural Lao PDR and Thailand. Third World Quarterly 34: 1896–1910.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Huijsmans, R., A. Ambarwati, C. Chazali, & M, Vijayabaskar 2020. Farming, Gender and Aspirations over the Young Life Course: Attempting to keep things open while becoming a farmer. European Jornal of Development Research, 33(1).

  • IFAD. 2019. Rural Development Report 2019: Creating Opportunities for Rural Youth. Rome: International Fund for Agricultural Development.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koning, J. 2005. The impossible return? The post-migration narratives of young women in rural java. Asian Journal of Social Science 33: 165–185.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leavy, J. & N. Hossain (2014) Who wants to farm? Youth aspirations, opportunities and rising food prices. IDS Working Paper 439. Falmer: Institute of Development Studies

  • Lowder, S., J. Skoet, and T. Raney. 2016. The number, size, and distribution of farms, smallholder farms and family farms worldwide. World Development 87: 16–29.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Manalo, J., and E. van de Vliert. 2013. Push and pull factors in Philippine rural youth migration. Asian Journal of Agricultural and Rural Development 10 (2): 59–73.

    Google Scholar 

  • McClelland, D.C. 1961. The Achieving Society. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand Co.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • McClelland, D. C. 1963. The achievement motive in economic growth. In B. F. Hoselitz and W. E. Moore (eds.) Industrialization and Society. The Hague: Mouton/UNESCO, pp. 74–6.

  • Melchers, I. and B. Büchler (2017) Africa’s rural youth speak out. Rural 21 – 03/2017.

  • Mwaura, G.M. 2017. The side-hustle: diversified livelihoods of Kenyan educated young farmers. IDS Bulletin 48 (3): 51–66.

    Google Scholar 

  • Naafs, S., and T. Skelton. 2018. Youthful futures: Education, aspirations and employment in Asia. Children’s Geographies 16 (1): 1–14.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • OECD. 2017. Youth Aspirations and the Reality of Jobs in Developing Countries: Mind the Gap. Paris: OECD Publishing Development Centre Studies.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Quaglia, R., and C. Cobb. 1996. Towards a theory of student aspirations. Journal of Research in Rural Education 12 (6): 127–132.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rigg, J., M. Phongsiri, B. Promphakping, A. Salamanca, and M. Sripun. 2019. Who will tend the farm? Interrogating the ageing Asian farmer. Journal of Peasant Studies 47 (2): 306–325.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ruralis, Eco. 2016. Farm Succession in Romania: Who will Take over the Lands from an Aging Peasant Population?. Cluj: Asociaţia Eco Ruralis.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schultz, T. 1961. Investment in human capital. The American Economic Review 51 (1): 1–17.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sentíes Portilla, G. 2018. Land concessions and rural youth in Southern Laos. In Gender and Generation in Southeast Asian Agrarian Transformations, ed. C.M.Y. Park and B. White, 152–171. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • UN. 2018. Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas. Adopted by the UN Human Rights Council, 39th Session, 28 September 2018.

  • White, B. 2018. Rural youth, today and tomorrow. Background Paper no. 8 for the 2019 Rural Development Report. Rome: IFAD.

  • White, B. and H. Wijaya. 2019. Young people’s spatial and sectoral mobility: a life-course perspective from Kulonprogo (Yogyakarta, Indonesia). Presented at the International Convention of Asian Scholars, Leiden.

  • World Bank. 2006. Development and the Next Generation: World Development Report 2007. Washington DC: The World Bank.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • World Bank. 2007. Agriculture for Development: World Development Report 2008. Washington DC: The World Bank.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • World Bank. 2015. World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society, and Behavior. Washington, DC: World Bank.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • World Bank. 2019. World Development Report 2019: The changing nature of work. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Yeboah, T. 2019. Building livelihoods: Young people and agricultural commercialization in Africa: Ghana case study. APRA Working Paper 20. Brighton: Future Agricultures Consortium.

  • Zipin, L., S. Sellar, M. Brennan, and T. Gale. 2015. Educating for futures in marginalized regions: a sociological framework for rethinking and researching aspirations. Educational Philosophy and Theory 47 (3): 227–246.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Emeritus International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands

    Ben White

Authors
  1. Ben White
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ben White.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

White, B. Human Capital Theory and the Defectology of Aspirations in Policy Research on Rural Youth. Eur J Dev Res 33, 54–70 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41287-020-00300-0

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41287-020-00300-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation