Introduction: Development, Young People, and the Social Production of Aspirations.

In this editorial introduction to the Special Issue Youth, Aspirations and the Life Course: Development and the social production of aspirations in young people's lives, we put the work presented in this collection in conversation with the wider literature on development, youth and aspirations. Aspiration we define as an orientation towards a desired future. We elaborate on our conceptualisation of aspirations as socially produced and reflect on the methodological challenges in researching young people's aspirations in development.

Our Generation…" Aspiration, Desire, and Generation as Discourse Among Highly Educated, Portuguese, Post-austerity Migrants in London.

Drawing on 18 months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, this paper brings into dialogue empirical material from young, highly educated Portuguese migrants in London, theoretical work on desire in migration studies and sociological approaches to theorising aspirations. The paper argues that young migrants' narratives of migration shed important light on the working of aspirations in the processes of becoming through migration. Such orientations towards the future are shaped by young migrants' engagements with doxic and habituated logics producing aspirations.

Beyond compartmentalization: a relational approach towards agency and vulnerability of young migrants.

Based on fieldwork material from Lao People's Democratic Republic, this paper introduces an analytical framework that transcends compartmentalized approaches towards migration involving young people. The notions of fluid and institutionalized forms of migration illuminate key differences and commonalities in the relational fabric underpinning empirically diverse migration scenarios. Applying this framework to the role of networks in becoming a young migrant, this chapter sheds light on young migrants' differential scope for exercising agency.