How to take flight from menacing futures?: Young people and education in the slums of the global south

Abstract

This chapter discusses the narratives of the future that the young people construct, narratives that constitute a political map that is drawn on the basis of lines of sedimentation that become lines of flight. It describes those subjects born in these neighborhoods, children of those who migrated here, of those with no place who found and forged a place for themselves in the slums. The chapter addresses those stories and narratives that render the city’s place of abjection a place in the world. The stories of the future discussed evidence emerging subjectivity in slums of the global south. In conjunction with the growth of megacities and of slums, the 20th century witnessed the revitalization of narratives that associate those zones of metropolis with crime and degradation as well as narratives that attempt to demonstrate that honorable, decent, hardworking people live in slums. Narratives of the future are multiple; they have a range of meanings and combine an array of elements.