Human Capital Theory and the Defectology of Aspirations in Policy Research on Rural Youth

This article turns a sceptical eye on policy studies of youth aspirations, and specifically the reported aspirations of the world’s rural youth for mobility from farming to non-farming, and rural to non-rural futures. Four large-scale multi-country studies on young people’s aspirations are reviewed, and compared with the findings of more detailed, in-depth, local studies. Aspirations, it is argued, are viewed (and researched) much too simplistically in the policy world. Examples from many parts of the world suggest a need for caution about prevailing narratives that ‘rural youth today are not interested in farming futures’. They underline the importance of a life-course and generational perspective on young people’s aspirations and their mobility out of, and perhaps later back into, farming.