Adolescents’ Expectations and Wellbeing Perceptions in Mumbai’s Hinterland and Its Slums: What Means ‘to Become Someone’ in Early XXI Century in Maharastra?

Abstract

India is usually seen as a universe of social divisions which walls are practically insurmountable: casts, economic classes, religions, ethnics. The sense of ‘belonging’ to primary groups becomes a traditional driver of the perceptions of adolescents, but global culture trends shape their aspirations from which they construct their expectations. Research about adolescent expectations matters because it connects with recent evidence from interdisciplinary and longitudinal studies about the crucial role that expectations play in adolescents’ achievements at the beginning of their early adult life. Expectations also connect with the ability to orient oneself towards the future, or what Arjun Appadurai calls “the capacity to aspire”, a navigational capacity like a map, through which people can explore their future, available options and opportunities. Furthermore, expectations are interesting because they inform about adolescents’ and young people’s current wellbeing. However, the role of cultural and contextual factors in the construction of expectations during adolescence has received little attention. EDUCO Foundation research project, that is the base of this chapter, explores the influence of contextual and cultural factors in that construction, in two districts of the state of Maharastra, India: a rural area—Shilonda, Palghar District- and an urban slum—Lallubhai Compound- in Mumbai. The use of a wellbeing approach enabled us to explore beyond the lack of income or material resources and to assess the influence of other factors in their wellbeing, and specially in their expectations, such as the quality of close and social relationships and the interconnectivity across different ‘scales’ from the local to the global. The approach allows us to assess factors like beliefs, social classes and casts system, violence, and the existence of adultcentric and androcentric patterns that determine recognition and opportunities that are the foundation of the construction of expectations and requirements for more social justice. From this relies on the widening or the erosion of the horizons of children and adolescents in the rural and urban world under the lights of Mumbai, the city of dreams.