“I have been hearing we are the future of tomorrow for so long now. When is tomorrow?” narratives on youth and the future in Nigeria

IF 3.2 2区心理学 Q1 PSYCHOLOGY, SOCIAL

British Journal of Social Psychology Pub Date : 2025-04-04 DOI:10.1111/bjso.12881

Uba Donald Dennis, Timileyin Fashola, Abba Danlami Haruna, Odion-Ikhere Joy Omose, Sigrun Marie Moss

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Abstract

Nigeria has one of the largest youth populations in the world. Across three rounds of a total of 17 focus group discussions in and around Abuja (N = 115), we discussed the sociopolitical situation in Nigeria before and after the national elections in 2023. Participants spoke of the need for change, and in their future-thinking, they positioned youth as key drivers for change. Through a narrative analysis, we explore this positioning, as well as the exclusion of youth from decision-making spaces. Participants–young and older–speak of the exclusion of youth as blocking imagined futures for the nation. We divided the results into two main narratives: narratives of despair and narratives of hope. Agency and power are positioned differently within these–as owned by the elites in the first set of narratives, and by the people (particularly the youth) in the latter. The former is the more prominent and emphasized narrative, speaking to the challenging situation in Nigeria. We make use of concepts of hope, agency, and world-making to discuss the data, keeping in mind the restrictive context and hindrances in place. Combined, this allows for exploring the impact of future stories on the present, and places agency and power (and the lack thereof) front and centre.

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来源期刊

British Journal of Social Psychology PSYCHOLOGY, SOCIAL-

CiteScore

9.50

自引率

7.40%

发文量

期刊介绍： The British Journal of Social Psychology publishes work from scholars based in all parts of the world, and manuscripts that present data on a wide range of populations inside and outside the UK. It publishes original papers in all areas of social psychology including: • social cognition • attitudes • group processes • social influence • intergroup relations • self and identity • nonverbal communication • social psychological aspects of personality, affect and emotion • language and discourse Submissions addressing these topics from a variety of approaches and methods, both quantitative and qualitative are welcomed. We publish papers of the following kinds: • empirical papers that address theoretical issues; • theoretical papers, including analyses of existing social psychological theories and presentations of theoretical innovations, extensions, or integrations; • review papers that provide an evaluation of work within a given area of social psychology and that present proposals for further research in that area; • methodological papers concerning issues that are particularly relevant to a wide range of social psychologists; • an invited agenda article as the first article in the first part of every volume. The editorial team aims to handle papers as efficiently as possible. In 2016, papers were triaged within less than a week, and the average turnaround time from receipt of the manuscript to first decision sent back to the authors was 47 days.