Introduction

On December 9, 2024, we the guest editors hosted an interactive online panel discussion on Global South Perspective on Youth Masculinities with scholars joining us from multiple countries, across multiple time zones. This global panel event was to mark the launch of Volume 1 of our Special Issue (eds. Mani and Philip, 2024) by the same name, which appeared in this journal. The discussion from the online panel produced several fruitful themes for thinking about youth masculinities in the Global South that we expand on here in this introduction to Volume 2 and are also themes that overlap with contributions that are part of this issue. Our authors reflected on the question about how their work challenges or contributes to Global North understandings of masculinities and youth. Their reflections, built on their articles, brought forward several nuances that cut across the articles both in the last issue and in this one. We want to reflect briefly on two important contributions that have emerged for us collectively—firstly, around the theme of context, and secondly, around the theme of young men's aspirations.