Putting Down Roots to Move On

Chapter Five moves the focus away from the campus onto other spaces around which students’ daily lives were structured. A close analysis of students’ occupational situations reveals that these young people were acutely aware of the difficulties involved in their attempts to carve out lucrative careers. It is argued that public discourses about the role of educated youth in Nepali society were part of this problem, as they tended to reinforce polarising depictions of youth as the panacea for and a menace to a prosperous future. Precisely because students’ efforts to ‘do good’ were much more low-key than prevalent representations of youth suggest, the contributions these young people made to the wider social good were largely overlooked. Modest appropriations of dominant educational and occupational strategies, however, allowed these young people to develop a sense of themselves as competent people and enabled them to maintain positive outlooks on life.