Critical geopolitics of child and youth migration in (post)socialist Laos

Stories of societal transformations are often narrated through a nationalist frame, and seldom through the lives of young people. Feminist contributions to critical geopolitics can inform engagements with children and youth, yet some important differences must be identified that affect the geo-graphing of young people's lives. Work on children and young people that adopts a critical geopolitics perspective has so far mostly taken the form of soliciting young people's opinions on geopolitical matters and investigating how international representations and processes affect their everyday lives. Placing the historical case of child migration during the Lao revolutionary struggle alongside contemporary practices helps to rethink the role of children and young people in important societal transformations. A main friction in socialist revolutions in agricultural societies such as Laos came to revolve around the gap between the socialist construct of childhood and the reality of young rural lives.