Social navigation and power in post-conflict Sierra Leone: Reflections from a former child soldier turned bike rider

Abstract

Social navigation is a concept increasingly being used by scholars to capture the complexities of young people’s wartime experiences, and simultaneously dispel portrayals of child soldiers as powerless, passive and/or pathological. In his discussion of youth and armed conflict in Guinea-Bissau, Vigh (2006) defines wartime social navigation as the way in which war-affected young people assess the changes within their socio-political environment, evaluate the emerging possibilities within this environment and, accordingly, direct their lives in the most beneficial and advantageous ways. Challenging frameworks of victimhood and taking into account elements of both broader structures and individual agency, social navigation encapsulates the ways in which agents such as child soldiers navigate the terrain of war - a terrain that is constantly moving and changing:.