Landscapes of extraction: Youth, coal and contested livelihoods in Tinsukia, Assam

The article explores the diverse and intersecting forms through which youth encounter, experience, and respond to coal mining in Tinsukia, Assam’s easternmost resource-rich district. Drawing on qualitative ethnographic fieldwork in the Ledo and Margherita coalfields, it examines how extractive economies reshape youth livelihoods, aspirations and vulnerabilities in a landscape marked by environmental devastation, informalization of labour, and uneven development The article focuses on three connected processes: the erosion of traditional livelihoods and ecological relations; entry into precarious and informal mining-related work; and the emergence of critique and resistance. Rather than treating youth as a homogeneous category, the article analyzes how their positions are not fixed but fluid. It shows how their positions differ according to access to land, labour, networks, and political resources, while also shifting between economic dependence, negotiation, and opposition. The article contributes to political ecology and extractive-frontier scholarship by foregrounding youth perspectives from a Northeast Indian coal belt and by showing how development is experienced simultaneously as livelihood opportunity and socio-environmental harm.