Youth, Skills and Education

The book critically examines psycho-educational developmental interventions that arguably contribute to ‘Positive Youth Development’, especially for marginalized youth conceived to be at-risk. Tracing the growth and circulation of these programmes from the Global North to the Global South, the book shows how these interventions seek to cultivate youth as entrepreneurial citizens who can cater to global developmental agendas. Using Life Skills Education programmes in India as an illustration, the book locates these programmes within the larger context of neoliberalization of education and training globally through programmes for social-emotional learning, personality, employability, and vocational skills.

It shows how such programmes cultivate an ethic of self-responsibility among ‘youth at-risk’, to overcome structural disadvantages by working upon themselves. However, sociocultural disconnects and youth agencies that emerge during programme implementation do not allow for straightforward replication of global neoliberal agendas. Closely examining the outcomes of programmes on youth, the book presents alternative agendas that can be truly empowering for young people in the Global South. Educators, policymakers, scholars, and students working in the areas of education, childhood and youth studies, development studies, and psychology benefit from the book’s in-depth analysis of young people’s expectations of education and developmental interventions, and how these programmes impact young people’s lives.

R. Maithreyi is a critical childhood studies and education scholar, focusing on youth in the Global South. She currently works at Karnataka Health Promotion Trust, Bengaluru. Her previous books include Educating Youth: Regulation through Psychosocial Skilling in India (2021) and Modernity, Schooling, and Childhood in India: Trajectories of Exclusion (2022).