La muerte social y las violentas oportunidades de vida

This article analyzes the military recruitment of urban youths in West Africa and analyzes their involvement in conflicts as a form of “social navigation”. We propose a perspective on the youth that assumes this generational category, both a social process and a position. The article illustrates how urban youths navigate their social links and the options that arise from wartime situations to escape social death, which otherwise is the main characteristic of their situation. When describing youth as a time of stagnation and rupture of the social existence of young people in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, wartime clearly becomes an area of possibilities, rather than just a space of death. Thus, the concept of social navigation offers deep insights into the cross-play between objective structures and subjective initiatives. This analytical perspective helps us give meaning to the sometimes-fatalistic ways and tactics with which youths struggle to broaden their horizons of possibilities in a world of conflict, unrest and diminishing resources, and shows us how facing conflict becomes a matter of balance between social death and the violent opportunities of life.