Being and becoming Adivasi youth in central India: an ethnographic engagement

This paper examines the meanings of being and becoming an Adivasi youth in present-day central India. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Bastar, it traces how ‘youth’ emerges as a social and political category, shaped by socioeconomic deprivation, educational mobility and unequal opportunities. Focusing on Adivasi youth aged 14–19, most of whom are first-generation school-goers who have moved from their villages to urban areas to attend government schools, the paper explores how schooling and hostel life reconfigure generational and class relationships, making the experience of youth simultaneously ambivalent, exhilarating and disorienting. Drawing on participant observation in schools and hostels, along with interviews and group discussions with 12 Adivasi youths, the analysis highlights how structural locations mediate their educational experiences, social relations and a sense of belonging. Employing the lens of a ‘social shifter’, the paper shows how meanings of youth vary across generational, classed and sociocultural contexts. By foregrounding the perspectives of Adivasi youth, the paper contributes to Adivasi studies and critical youth studies by advancing a relational and situated understanding of youth as a category anchored in lived experience and everyday social life in central India.